Ripped from the Headlines: Behind A Wall (Night's Black Agents)

This week's post comes to you courtesy of an article in the Washington Post: China cultivated high-rolling crime families before turning on them by Shibani Mahtani, Christian Shepherd and Pei-Lin Wu.

For the scion of a crime family linked to human trafficking and enslavement, money laundering and global cyberscams, Wei Qingtao was brazenly public. His Douyin account, the Chinese-language version of TikTok, flaunted the excesses of his life in a remote corner of Myanmar by the border with China: Bentleys and Lamborghinis, rare cigars and private jets.

When the 27-year-old partied at the multistory, glass-walled nightclub he owned in a region called Kokang, he’d throw crisp Chinese yuan bills into the crowd as international techno DJs, chauffeured in along dirt roads, performed their sets.

In November, the good times rolled to a stop. Wei’s social media presence vanished. He soon appeared in a different kind of video: reading a scripted confession while in Chinese custody

The article's behind a paywall but I highly recommend it, if you can get to a copy. 

However, the bit that caught my attention talked about the Crouching Tiger compound, where hackers and scammers were corralled into a villa and kept there by force, the better to direct their efforts against victims of the syndicate. 

Clans also hired foreign security personnel to protect their interests. Alex Klisevits, a former Estonian navy officer, was among a team of 11 who arrived in Kokang after responding to a job ad seeking close protection officers for a “Chinese businessman.” Klisevits said he was smuggled in and soon realized he was not free to leave. The first day on the job, Klisevits said he saw a chained man beaten unconscious.

“When I saw how they punished people … I thought, ‘where the hell am I?’” Klisevits said.

If ever there was a Night's Black Agents plotline ripped from the headlines, this is it.  

Consider: when Stoker wrote Dracula he set the action in the Carpathians, which had the advantage from a writer's perspective of being difficult to get to and shrouded in mystery. That is no longer so. When you can buy tickets for the castle tour, the Count's lair loses its dangerous edge. 

The same can't be said of a remote crime fiefdom in Kokang. 

Kokang is a region within the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, aka Burma until fairly recently, the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia. Myanmar shares a border with China, and Kokang is on that border. Kokang was part of China until it was ceded to Britain in the late 19th century, and there's significant crossover between China and Kokang. It's a self-administered zone within Myanmar, which is probably for the best as it's infested with warlords and poppy smugglers. 

Image sourced from WP which got it from Google Earth

They're big on casinos in Kokang which is one of the main attractions for Chinese citizens. Like Macao, Kokang relies on Chinese tourists who can't gamble at home. Also like Macao, Kokang relies on extra-legal debt collectors, since gambling debts are unenforceable in China. Of course, these extra-legal groups don't stop at gambling debts, any more than a wolf stops at one sheep.

In the WP article a source describes the relationship between the two as “a Frankenstein monster that it [China] now can’t control.”

The Crouching Tiger villa was a hotbed of internet scams. The operators were kept at it 24/7, communicating with their Chinese targets and scraping off whatever they could get. Hence the guards; the actors and keyboard artists didn't want to be there and had to be threatened with violence to stay at their posts. Also, hence the raid, allegedly anyway; China got tired of the scams.

From the WP:

Many of the compounds for running scam operations were hosted in the same hotels and casino complexes long established by the clans. Others were purpose built, but had telltale signs like barred windows, high walls and even Myanmar military snipers on the rooftops, witnesses said.

This could be the setting for a very interesting introductory scenario. The characters are brought together by a mysterious Mr. Johnson in the usual way and sent off after an objective. The scenario in the main book, (S)entries, is exactly this sort of scenario. 

Except in (S)entries the agents are sent into a NATO base to retrieve a laptop. This time, the agents are sent into Kokang to retrieve a person.

Darkest Before The Dawn

Your mission: go to Kokang and retrieve Estonian operative Andrus Tamm, former First Infantry Scouts Battalion rapid response soldier turned bodyguard. Tamm has been swept up in a Myanmar military operation in Kokang intended to clear out a crime-infested region. He's currently in jail. It's believed that, if the agents don't intervene, Tamm will be spirited across the Chinese border and wind up in some quiet, remote prison, never to be seen again. 

Once successful, the agents are to get Tamm across the Indian border to a safe house in Mumbai, where Mr. Johnson will take possession.

All the agents are told about the target in the briefing is that Tamm was working for a crime syndicate, that he was brought in under false pretenses as bodyguard for an important official, and that until the sweep he was actually working as a guard at a cyberscam facility in Kokang called Black Tiger. 

Investigative point spends show that Myanmar would never have carried out a raid like this without Chinese backing and support. Tradecraft or similar indicate that China's secretive state agency Room 452 played a part in the raid. Further spends (Occult or similar) note that, in Chinese imagery, a Black Tiger is thought to ward off evil. However, at the compound, where there are graphic images of black tigers, none of them have the symbol of three horizontal lines connected by a central vertical line 王 (wang) meaning 'king', which normally decorate mythological black tiger imagery.

Enter the agents.

Option One: Hopping Mad. This raid was a proof of concept. Room 452 knows that Edom wants to use Dracula as an agent of the Crown, but Room 452 hasn't a hope of recruiting the great vampire. Instead, it has some tame (ish) jin-gui on the payroll, and this was its first outing. The ultimate intent is to create an anti-Dracula; China's fear is that Edom succeeds and, when it does, Dracula will give the UK an edge. Tamm is a witness to the hopping vampire's ravages, and Edom wants to debrief him. Mr. Johnson is on Edom's payroll, but he's had a change of heart - the Americans are offering more money. Crossing over into Mumbai will put the agents squarely in the crosshairs of Edom, Room 452 and some shadowy American intelligence types.

Option Two: Shaw Brothers. The raid was an attempt to put a vampire problem down for good. The Kokang crime syndicate was a Conspiracy node engaged in research on human subjects, and Tamm was one of the subjects. The Conspiracy was attempting to create a different kind of Renfield, one whose mental state isn't so ... fluid. Chinese forces were there to put down a crime syndicate; Room 452 hitched a ride hoping to gather up any loose intel the Conspiracy left lying around. Mr. Johnson is working on behalf of Tamm's relatives, who just want him back safe and sound. The relatives haven't got nearly as much money as they promised but they do have connections within the Estonian government, which is how they had the ability to arrange all this.  

Option Three: Encounters of the Spooky Kind. The raid, and the agents' involvement, was orchestrated by Room 452. They know that the Kokang crime syndicate stumbled onto supernatural powers; one of their new casinos happened to be built on top of an ancient tomb, and something crawled out during construction. Room 452 sees this as the perfect opportunity to get those supernatural powers for themselves, but they don't want to tip their hand. If they were seen to be directly involved in a snatch-and-grab in Kokang, that might alert Edom and every other vampire agency on the planet. If, on the other hand, some useful foreign pawns "snatch" the asset and take it to Mumbai, well ... it's so easy to lose inconvenient corpses in Mumbai ... Tamm is human but he's carrying the prize, and if he or someone else breaks the seal on that peculiar antique he's lugging around that will be problematic for everyone in a five-mile radius. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Sinister Buns (Call of Cthulhu, Hong Kong Cinema)

I held off getting a blu-ray player for a long time. 

I didn’t see the need. Drives are dead. DVDs are yesterday’s tech. Physical is so last century.  

Then those wicked pork buns drew me back in. 

See, physical is still the best way to get hold of anything that isn’t Main Street USA. If I want Hollywood, if I want anything North American really, it is easily had. There are any number (God, oh God, so many) ways to get that content. Streaming options beyond the dreams of avarice. 

But. 

If I want, say, The Untold Story, how do I get that? If I want any kind of non-English language media, how the hell do I get it? There must be Spanish, German, Italian streaming services, and I shall want a VPN at the very least to access them, never mind a working knowledge of the language to understand the menu options. Netflix is a gateway but it offers only a glimpse; besides, damned if I’m paying $22/month for yet another streaming service. 

No, if I wanted my pork buns – hot from Terracotta in the UK – I’d have to get an external blu ray drive for my PC. Which is exactly what I did. 

The Untold Story is a retelling of the infamous Eight Immortals killings in Macau. Two high stakes gamblers, one a restaurant owner with a family of ten, argued over debts. The restaurant owner Zheng Lin refused to pay Huang Zhiheng so Huang, in a fit of rage, tried to force Zheng to pay up. That went badly wrong and Huang killed Zheng’s whole family, thus becoming the owner of the Eight Immortals restaurant. Briefly.  

How do you get rid of all those bodies? 

Well, there’s a perfectly good restaurant in need of meat for its famous pork buns … or so the story goes. That part may be apocryphal, but it became part of the narrative.  

The 1993 film version won awards and made a ton of money at the box office, but due to its graphic scenes of rape and murder – plus, of course, those buns – it was age restricted to 18 and up. It’s mildly notorious as a slasher, but difficult to get hold of. Unless you buy from an outlet like the folks at Terracotta.  

Having seen it, my review: 

It’s an odd little duck. The killing scenes are about as bloody and nasty as anything you’re going to see on screen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang as killer Wong Chi-hang is a standout. The comedy cops in hot pursuit are an incompetent bunch of bozos; they’re all stereotypes of one kind or other, led by their fearless Lieutenant Lee, and there’s a peculiar running gag where Lee parades around with a host of prostitutes on his arm much to the disgust of his only female subordinate Bo (Emily Kwan) who wants Lee all to herself. It doesn’t pair all that well with the main plot. That said, it does end in a stunning moment when all those same comedy cops realize that the pork buns they’ve been chowing down on free of charge came with a hidden cost. 

Cheap, nasty, entertaining. It may be the unrelenting realism of the gore scenes (a stark contrast with modern cinema) but it really does stick in your mind in a way that few other films can. 

If you want a good retelling of the pork buns saga I recommend Kento Bento’s version, which I believe is on Nebula; not sure as it’s been a while since I watched Nebula. 

From a gaming POV there have been plenty of examples of suspicious meat on the menu. Sweeny Todd, Telltale’s Walking Dead (the comic too, for that matter, in a different plotline), Fritz Haarmann the Vampire of Hanover, who allegedly sold the meat of his victims on the black market – take your pick, really. 

There haven’t been as many haunted restaurants. 

There is a starting Call of Cthulhu scenario in the main book, The Haunting. It’s been around for donkey’s years. You can find it in the free-to-play Quick Start rules. In that scenario the investigators are called in to investigate a haunted house. So far, so normal – at least, normal in a Cthulhu-esque way. 

What if it wasn’t a haunted house? What if it was a haunted restaurant? What would need to change? 

Not much, really. The Keeper would need to change some of the details of the ground floor plan. But the plot would tick on regardless, and you’d have some interesting horror options – particularly in the kitchen. The family would live above the restaurant, so you wouldn’t have to change much about the upper floors. 

The Macario family would be the ones running the restaurant of course; a nice little red-sauce-spaghetti joint. Until Mr. Macario decided to add a little extra to the Bolognese. Then there’s a discreet pause while the place is shut up for … let’s call it redecoration.  At that point Mr. Knott, the building’s owner, calls in the investigators. He wants to rent the place out to new tenants but the restaurant’s reputation frightens off any interested parties. If they could just give the place the all-clear, he could rent the place out. 

A potential plot change: as written Vittorio Macario, the former restauranteur, is locked up in the asylum. His only plot function is to hint at a way of defeating the evil. 

Suppose he has a secondary function. Suppose he escapes from the asylum with one thought on his mind: a grand reopening of Macario’s Restaurant.  

He’ll need meat for the Bolognese, of course … 

That’s it for this week. Enjoy! 

Floating the Dragon (Swords of the Serpentine)

 Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Last time I populated the Building. Time to add some layers.

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of scenarios in any campaign: foundational, plot specific, and climactic.

Foundational scenarios are the groundwork. They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot. When I discussed Bookhounds games, and horror in general, many moons ago I said that "the first act [must] establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Whether the players are veterans, novices or a mixture of the two, they've never played in this game world before, because it's your game world, fashioned out of your ideas and imagination. They don't know what to look forward to, or what to be worried about."

That's what a foundational scenario is. The first act. It doesn't have to include anything overtly Monstrous at this stage, because although this train is headed down Monstrous tracks this is just the first act. The establishing shot. The moment where the players get settled in to the story you're telling.

Remember that this is just as much foundational for the players as it is for you. They have only the sketchiest idea of who their characters are. Sure, they know the characters' stats and they have a more or less detailed backstory, but a character isn't defined by backstory. It's defined in play. Just like real life; character isn't about what people say, but what they do. You need to see what the characters do, before you know who they are.

Plot specific scenarios happen after the foundation is established. They usually involve some kind of plot specific quest, quest object, information or NPC. This is either a goal in its own right or it leads the investigators to a goal. Since this is a Monstrous game, a plot specific scenario will involve Monsters. It might be a reveal, a confrontation, an antagonist reaction. If this were a Night's Black Agents game then the plot-specific scenario would probably involve some kind of conspyramid reaction. In a Trail game the investigators would finally come face-to-face with the entity all those cultists have been chanting about, or find a copy of the Necronomicon.

By this point the players should already have a good idea of who their characters are, so you should be on the lookout for some character-specific reactions. Or take the trouble to create some. If you know that the duelist character is into himbos, then the antagonist for this scenario should be a himbo - that sort of thing. If you know a character is afraid of birds, then this is the time for birds. Note, I said character. It's a very different thing if the player is afraid of birds. Don't be that guy. 

Climactic scenarios often happen at the end of the arc and may or may not involve a big punch-up. In The Hobbit the arc ends with the Battle of the Five Armies. In video games, and Dungeons and Dragons, it usually ends with a boss battle. It doesn't have to be that way. A climactic scenario is a climax; it doesn't have to be a bloody one. Most horror games end in trauma, but it's a mental trauma not a physical one. The chief thing to bear in mind is that the central dilemma of the plot so far has to be resolved. 

In the first chapter of Telltale's Walking Dead, there is no clash of armies, no punch-up. The central dilemma has always been how to raise Clementine, the small child who's been the heart of the series up to that point. Therefore the climactic moment comes when Lee, the main character, resolves her plotline - in the quietest way possible, surrounded by the undead. 

That's the kind of climactic moment I like to shoot for, but seldom get. What happens, happens. But the point I'm getting at is the climactic moment can be as loud, as impactful, or as sinister as you make it. It's perfectly reasonable for the climactic moment to come when the characters realize everyone else in the Night Market is on the Rattakan's side, and they have to decide whether to join in and become one of them or leave the only home they've ever known. It's just as reasonable for a traumatic fight against birds end with the survivors sneaking away in their car. Or for a lone guest to leave the restaurant and stagger towards an uncertain future.

The last kind of scenario we need to talk about isn't really a scenario; it's a stopgap. It doesn't fit with the others, but it's necessary. This is the floating scenario. It can be boiled down to a floating scene rather than a full scenario, but the point is this: every so often events will shake out in a way you didn't plan for and you need some time to regroup. That's when you bring out the floating scenario. It doesn't have to fit with the rest. It just has to kill time while you try to resolve the problems caused by the unexpected bump in the road. 

Let's say for the sake of argument that you've been planning a punch-up with the big bad and the players unexpectedly resolve that conflict early by ambushing the big bad and smothering it while it's asleep. OK, not too heroic, but it gets the job done. Now you're short a big bad and you don't know how to get to a climactic scene when the climax you had planned came a wee bit prematurely. 

Time for the floating scenario. Perhaps at the end of that scenario you reveal that the actual big bad was something else altogether, or that the big bad the heroes slew was the real big bad's son, or that without the big bad some other terrible thing will happen so now the heroes have to do what the big bad would have done had it not been killed. But having the floating scenario available gives you the opportunity to regroup without having a nervous breakdown, and hopefully gives you time to sow the seeds for future climactic scenarios. 

The key thing to bear in mind about a floating scenario is, while it may be located in the plot area - Sag Harbor, in this case - it is not plot related. It's just something you have in your back pocket in case of accidents. A Night Market festival. An unexpected arrival, or departure. A disaster. An opportunity. Hidden treasure. Or maybe everyone gets stoned.

Cowboy Bebop

The ideal floating scenario is one which can be used in multiple situations, even different campaigns or settings, with only the most modest modifications.

Bookhounds, for example, has book auctions. Those appear to be specific to Bookhounds, but think about it: auctions can happen in any setting. You can have an auction in Dungeons and Dragons, or Swords of the Serpentine, or Dracula Dossier. If all you have to do to make an auction setting specific is to change a few names, and perhaps the McGuffin, it's the ideal floating scenario. You can put it just about anywhere and it performs the same function (killing time) while also giving the characters a new McGuffin to chase.  

OK, that's enough talking in the abstract. Next time out, some Foundational stuff.

Enjoy!

Not Quite Review Corner: City of Mist (Son of Oak)

City of Mist, a detective RPG with mythic elements, is a 2017 Kickstarter release from Son of Oak, lead designer and producer Amit Moshe's brainchild. Fans flocked to give Son of Oak over $100,000 when the studio went seeking crowdfunding, and now the legend has become reality, with print and PDF release. I didn't back the Kickstarter but I was intrigued by the concept, so I bought the PDF version.

Those of you already familiar with Apocalypse World and FATE will find much that's familiar here. The system is blessedly simple. At its very core is a dice mechanic: 2D6, 10+ is a definite success, 7-9 is a messy success, anything else is a fail. Modifiers can be added which affect success or the potential outcome, depending on a character's mythos or course of action - is the character affected by a Status modifier, Facing Danger, Hitting It With All She's Got? - and these modifiers vary to such a degree that it's almost impossible to describe them in one review. A Bastion Mythos, for example, means protection - but protection can mean unshakeable will, a magic shield, immunity from the law, fire resistance, or something else again. Regardless, they each affect the dice mechanic in the same way: 7-9 is a messy success, 10+ a success, anything else a fail, and what actually happens depends on the situation, taking all applicable modifiers into account.

However for the folks going 'hey, that sounds a lot like [fill in blank - Cthulhu Confidential was what I was reminded of]' yes, it does sound a lot like, because it is a lot like. The game's very player-facing, so only the players will ever roll dice, and the players will decide which modifiers apply as well, for the most part. The Master of Ceremonies - City's name for the GM, DM, Keeper, Director, etc - sets the scene and decides the plot, but rarely touches dice or gets directly involved in the mechanics of any scene.

The players are Rifts, or the Awakened. They might look like ordinary people, but at their core they have a touch, or more than a touch, of the uncanny about them. On these mean streets the myths and legends of old are new again; King Arthur might be flipping burgers in a Downtown diner, but he's still King Arthur at heart, and that means he can draw on his Mythos to get things done, if he has to. Exactly what that means is determined by the player during character creation, and is left largely up to the player. Whether this player prefers the Medieval version or something closer to Marion Zimmer Bradley, or something entirely different, is where this King may differ from all the others.

Each character balances Mythos against Logos, or the Legend against mundane Reality. Those fully in the grip of Reality are Sleepers, and have no idea that myths and legends walk the streets. Those with just a little myth about them are Touched, but mostly normal. Those with fifty-fifty myth versus reality are Borderline, while those mostly myth are Legendary. If they go one step further than Legendary, the story overtakes the person it inhabits, and the affected shell then becomes an Avatar.

Becoming an Avatar is a lot like completely blowing a Sanity check in Call of Cthulhu, or one of its many variants, except without the whole, y'know, going insane bit. Well, maybe a little bit insane. See, at that point you become the Mythos and start fulfilling your True Destiny, except now all humanity has been burnt away and you have Godlike powers. You may accomplish spectacular things - so long as the power lasts. However once you burn through your time as Avatar, that godlike power vanishes, and probably takes the character with it, though there's always a chance she might return later.

The Mythos can be almost anything. King Arthur is an obvious choice, but a player could as easily decide to base their character on Excalibur, Don Quixote, Jack the Ripper, a Poltergeist, or pretty much anything else. Any character, item or location from religion, fiction, fable, folklore or otherwise is up for grabs.

Your Mythos helps determine your powers, in a very loose way. The player determines exactly which powers apply, and presumably is guided by the core concept of the character. So someone who takes Don Quixote as a character idea then determines which themes, story tags and other add-ons apply, based on the core idea of Don Quixote. But since Don Quixote embodies many possible add-ons, and since this is ultimately player's choice, one Don Quixote may be very unlike another. Which, to be fair, fits the core concept of the setting nicely - the Mythos is always struggling to break free, and this can manifest in many different ways, thus creating many different potential Avatars.

You'll note that word 'presumably.' Because this game is so very player-facing, I can foresee situations in which a player's idea doesn't really match the story tags chosen for the character. There's enough flexibility here that this shouldn't matter, but that ultimately will depend on who's sitting at the table on the day.

As a side note, the MC should prepare for some friction if the player's chosen concept doesn't mesh with the other players. One player might find a beer-drinking trucker Jesus - after all, religion's on the table, don't forget - hilarious, while the person sitting next to Jesus might go into meltdown at the very idea. Know your players well enough before you start play that you may avoid these situations, is my advice to you.

So why doesn't anyone notice these legendary characters roaming the streets, making beanstalks grow up to the clouds and causing magical mayhem? That's thanks to the Mist, a reality-shaping McGuffin that prevents people from noticing the strangeness all around them. It permeates every element of the City, from the least sewer to the highest skyscraper. A clash between titans could appear, to Mist-addled Sleepers, like a gun battle. It's still a fight, and blood is shed, but it's a fight they understand. Or perhaps they get a very brief glimpse, and then their minds rewrite their recollection of events so everything's explained, or ignored.

Say some hideous event blows a hole in the City, drowning whole neighborhoods beneath a lake. To the Sleepers, that lake's always been there. The ruins in that lake are archaeological discoveries, not evidence of a recent disaster. The people that died when the City blew up didn't die in an explosion; they had heart attacks, or moved away, or never existed in the first place. Only those with a touch of Mythos about them suspect the truth, and even they don't know the half of it.

It's a detective game, but unlike Gumshoe there are no point pools to manage. Instead it's all handled by dice. A dice roll determines how many Clues you obtain, and exactly how you get those clues will depend on the means by which you went looking for them. Did you investigate a crime scene, gossip with the cops, perform some kind of magical ritual, something else? Whatever it may be, you then trade those Clues for answers, and each Clue gets you a guaranteed truthful answer from the MC to one question.

Say you accumulate 3 Clues after scoping out a graveyard. You might then ask, is there anyone in that graveyard who looks suspicious? The MC answers yes, there is; there's a lone figure in a trenchcoat who seems to be lying in wait. The next question is, does that person pose a threat? The MC answers yes, you can see the telltale bulge of a shotgun hidden underneath that trenchcoat. That leaves one Clue unspent, and one question yet to be answered.

Much like GUMSHOE, action is divided into Scenes. There's slightly less structure to the setup here than GUMSHOE fans are familiar with; there's no attempt to divide things up into a particular narrative, or organize things along a spine. Instead the game uses an Iceberg illustrative mechanic to describe story building. Those who see an iceberg know they're only looking at the very smallest part of it, the exposed tip - or, in a murder investigation, the dead body. But go deeper, and who knows what you'll find?

I rather like the Iceberg concept, though I suspect it's in part because it reminds me of a reverse Conspyramid from Night's Black Agents. Rather that build up to a tip, you sink down to a conclusion - but the base idea is the same.

OK, so all that's what the game is. Next question: how does it feel? And does it work?

It feels a little tricky, to be honest. There are some games that anyone can play, and there are some that depend very much on like-minded people with similar skill sets deciding to play. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, is a game everyone can get behind, regardless of experience or ability. The quiet player who doesn't like to roleplay and the exuberant talker can each have as much fun as the other, because the game has ways in which both can access the fun. Whereas Wraith is a game that, by virtue of its mechanics and setting, is only ever going to appeal to a certain kind of player. If not everyone at the table is into it, that will make things awkward for everyone. Which is not to say that Wraith is a bad game - it's one of my favorites - but I have to bear in mind that not every gaming group I'm in is going to be happy playing Wraith.

City of Mists is in the latter category. The quiet player is probably going to be intimidated by the setting and the core mechanic, since it requires such a heavy player investment, and relies on roleplay to really sing. Whereas the exuberant talker will leap on this with cries of joy, because the game actively rewards talking and roleplay. As MC, you need to bear in mind that not everyone at the table will be happy with City of Mist, and that may determine whether you decide to play at all.

The other big issue I have is that, as far as the setting's concerned, there's not a lot of there, there. With a concept as strong as this - new Legends rising from old stories - you'd expect the City to be as compelling, but a lot of the nitty-gritty is actually left up to the players and MC. I suppose this is unavoidable; anything this player-facing will depend heavily on player input, so the designers have to leave a lot unsaid. Plus it allows the MC to base the campaign's city on pretty much anything, from Prohibition era Chicago to modern day Monaco, Victorian Paris or anything in between. But it didn't light my imagination afire when it described the City in a series of Tropes like The Run-Down Apartment, The Public Park, The Ruin, or The Historic Residence.

I suppose my disappointment is partly down to the noir problem. I convinced myself this was a way of telling noir stories with a Mythic edge. I even convinced myself noir was in the title, or the subtitle, of the main book - which, of course, it isn't. Noir is mentioned in the Kickstarter pitch and it comes up a couple times in the main book, but there isn't, say, a chapter dedicated to film noir or any real exploration of what that style of storytelling might mean to the campaign.

See, if you aim for a noir style, then the City plays a major role. The setting - the situation - is larger than any of the characters. If the characters fail - and they frequently fail - then, more often than not, they are crushed and beaten by the situation. There's a reason why one of the most famous and oft-quoted lines in cinema is  'Forget it, Jake - it's Chinatown.' At that point Polanski bows to the central tenet of noir: the good guys don't triumph in the final reel, and anything resembling victory is spattered with blood.

But with City of Mist the setting can never be larger than the characters. By definition the characters are larger than life, in every possible sense. Moreover as embodiments of Mythos working towards Avatar status, failure seems remote. It can be a tragedy in the same sense that Macbeth is a tragedy, but Macbeth crushes dynasties and lays waste to everything around him, whereas Robert Mitchum, say, maybe punches a few goons before being gunned down. The scale's all wrong for noir. It's like trying to reshoot Casablanca with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead, and a few extra car chases and explosions.

There is a Campaign Book, and that may solve some of the issues I've mentioned, but as I've not seen it I can't comment. I would say that, if I was picking this up on a whim - which is exactly what I have done - I'd expect the main book to solve pretty much all my problems, and the add-on to give me even more stuff. I wouldn't want to go spending another $50-ish in the hope that the add-on fills holes found in the main book.

I feel as if I've spent a lot of time griping, so let's talk about the good stuff.

The interior layout is very good. I could have lived without quite so many 'coffee stains' on the pages, and I couldn't help but be reminded of a comment made by a blind gamer a while ago at YSDC, that these non-essential images may look great, but they play hell with PDF readers used by the sight-impaired. The artwork and imagery really helps sell the core idea, which is a plus.

The core idea is gorgeous. It reminds me very much of Vertigo back in the day, with the Sandman, Lucifer and the rest. For those going Fables, Fables, Fables, yes, I can see where you're coming from, but I was never that fond of Fables. It never clicked with me.

The designers are very generous with their content. There are two scenarios and plenty of downloads available, for free, on their site - no doubt thanks to cash-handy Kickstarter backers, but still, it's a welcome addition.

I said before that this is a game that will appeal to a particular group of people, but I'll also say this: if you happen to be in that group, this will become your favorite game. The concept and rules are so simple that anyone can understand them with minimal explanation, and once you're there, it's easy to fall in love with this big, bad City. It's also a pretty decent choice for someone's first tabletop RPG, in that the rules are so simple they won't intimidate novices, and the concept's so strong that everyone will have an idea of what they want to do five minutes after the MC explains the setting.

It's also not a bad choice for someone's first time behind the MC's screen. A lot of would-be Keepers, Dungeon Masters and world-builders charge in bull-headed looking for something unique, something they can make totally their own. They want to be master of all they survey, and it's just not good enough if all they survey is a couple of hamlets and some hapless hobbits. They want a grand canvas, worlds to save - or damn - and the highest possible stakes, for the greatest heroes ever known. City of Mist provides that grand canvas, with a system and setting robust enough for any idea to flourish. Whereas if that same neophyte decided Dungeons and Dragons, say, was the way to go, they'd have to become expert in a relatively complex system, and then decide what kind of story to tell within that system, and then decide whether they need any of the many extra mechanics Dungeons and Dragons supplies to make that story work, and then become masters of those extra mechanics ... and so on. It's a lot of effort, is what I'm getting at, and the great thing about City is, you, as MC, don't need to kill yourself with work to have a good time. The players will be doing a lot of that for you.

Do I recommend City of Mist? Yes, though not without reservations. Will I play it? Oh, yes. In fact there's a one-off I should be designing for some folks who are down for Christmas, and I think City is an excellent choice for them.

Is it for everyone? No - but if it's for you, then it's going to become a permanent part of your RPG landscape.

Enjoy!

Not Quite Review Corner: The Walking Dead S3 (Telltale)

OK, in the spirit of 2016 the final post for the year - which is why this is up now rather than Sunday - will be a review of zombie apocalypse title Telltale Games' The Walking Dead Season 3, aka A New Frontier. This title is available on current generation consoles and PC as well as iPad; I played the iPad version of episodes one and two. Spoilers, especially for The Walking Dead Season Two, so bear that in mind in three, two, one ...

Meh.

Telltale creates brilliant plots. You forgive its on-rails story beats because the characters and situations are interesting and the story's good. However Telltale has gone to the well once too often with Season Three, and no matter how good the story is veterans of the title will feel cheated.

Bear in mind: I loved Telltale's previous efforts. Like everyone else I fell in a big way for Clementine and Lee in Season One. When Clementine became the main character in Season Two I was on board, and enjoyed it from start to finish. However that was because in Season Two the story branched off; your decisions really mattered, because your decisions determined where Clementine would end up.

At the end of the last Season I went with Jane and ended up in Carver's old base. I could have gone to Wellington to live with other survivors, or gone with Kenny, or struck out on my own. This was a huge difference from Season One, where no matter what I did everyone's fates were set in stone and my decisions changed nothing.

Except my decisions in Season Two really changed nothing, because at the beginning of Season Three no matter what I decided Clementine's story is reset to zero again. No Kenny, no Jane, and no matter where I thought I left Clementine she's not there any more. Moreover there's no chance of either Kenny or Jane coming back in future episodes. All the work I put into Clementine's story counts for nothing.

Now she's second fiddle again, this time to series newcomer Javier, or Javi, a former pro baseball player who got booted for cheating and has deep-seated family issues. The story starts with Javi guiding part of his extended family away from the developing zombie madness, while his older brother David takes their bitten mother to the hospital. So far so Walking Dead, and to the game's credit Javi and his family are interesting, developed characters with distinct voices and personalities.

Frankly, if the game had concentrated on them and left Clementine out of it, I'd have enjoyed it more than I did. But Clementine's become an icon of the series now, not unlike Rick in The Walking Dead comic book and TV show, so nothing in Telltale's drama can happen unless Clementine is involved.

Her plot role is blurry. In the first Season, as Lee, you guided and protected Clementine, and she became the moral center of the story. In the second Season Clementine grew up and began taking charge of her own life, assuming a leadership role. In the third Season you don't really know if she's some kind of mentor to Javi, a millstone around his neck, or something else. Is Javi supposed to be another Lee? Is this a partnership of equals? Is she just here because Telltale couldn't write this thing without her?

Season Three reminds me, now I think on it, of 400 Days, the filler episode between Season One and Season Two. I wasn't expecting much from 400 Days, and I didn't get much. It was bite sized entertainment. Great storytelling - again, telling the tale is not Telltale's problem - but zero impact on the ongoing plot. You might or might not rescue X, Y or Z, and that means X, Y or Z might or might not show up for a very brief cameo moment in Season Two. In that cameo moment the character delivers one or two lines. Then the character vanishes, never to be seen again. Presumably they get eaten. Who knows? Who cares?

Mechanically this is the Telltale you remember, with the usual screen pokes and swipes to get you from A to B. If you've never played one of these before the system is so simple anyone can pick it up. If you're a series regular there's nothing new here.

Graphically I think iPad users were cheated. The resolution's not nearly as good as other platforms. Example: early on in the first episode Jane gives Clementine a small tattoo on her hand. I had no idea what that thing was. At first I thought Clem'd been bitten. It was only after I saw the same sequence in a YouTube video that I realized it was a tattoo. This isn't a huge problem, but it is annoying.

Sound effects are sparse. Big moments have their big bangs and zombie groans, but frequently the protagonists are moving through areas where there ought to be background noises - birds, wind in the trees - and it's just silent. The music's decent, but no standout moments so far.

Will I keep playing?

Ehhhhh ...

I'm not buying into the season pack deal, that's for certain. I might pick up the other episodes if they go on sale in a year's time. But I can't help thinking that no matter what I do, what I decide, this video game doesn't want me involved. My decisions don't matter. My input's irrelevant.

It's like a work meeting. You're expected to attend, perhaps even encouraged to contribute. But this is the kind of workplace that doesn't want to hear your ideas. Management has already decided what's going to happen. You're just window dressing in someone else's pretty picture.

Pass.

Not Quite Review Corner: Batman (Telltale, iPad)

Batman took off as a video game property back in 2009, with the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. There had been Batman games before, but no company before Rocksteady succeeded so thoroughly in making the player feel like the Dark Knight, in an adventure exactly like one of the Caped Crusader's grimmer tales. Not quite Alan Moore, but a passable Alan Grant. It spawned a succession of solid sequels, most of which - even the bad ones - were well received commercially.

Back in 2012 Telltale Games, a company that made a decent living but no significant reputation with episodic adventure games, confounded all expectations with The Walking Dead, an adaptation of the comic series by Robert Kirkman. Like Arkham Asylum, The Walking Dead shot to everybody's Top Ten or Game of the Year lists on release. It also spawned a ton of sequels, most of which were solidly put together even when they didn't match the emotional pull of the first game. Since then Telltale parlayed its newfound glory into a string of impressive hits, not least of which was The Wolf Among Us, an adaptation of a hit DC Vertigo series, Fables.

It was only a matter of time before Telltale gave Batman the episodic game treatment, and once it did it was bound to come out for iPad just as its other titles have. It just did, and these last few days I've been giving the first episode, Realm of Shadows, a shot on my iPad Air.

There are two questions to answer here:

Does it work as a Batman title?

Does it work as an iPad game?

The short answers are Not Entirely, and Absolutely Not.

As a Batman title it flows well. It suffers from Too Many Characters syndrome, probably because it's trying to pump as much Batman cred as it can in a short play time. I finished the title in a little under two hours, in which time we met Harvey Dent aka Two Face - before his unfortunate accident - the Penguin, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, Detective (not yet Commissioner) Gordon, Vicky Vale, and probably Scarecrow, though that last awaits confirmation. Fewer references would have made for a better plot. But there's a decent balance between action and thoughtful crime-solving, and it really benefits from focusing on Bruce Wayne rather than his caped alter ego.

As a brief aside: it's a mature title, but all that really means is occasionally Selina Kyle says 'shit.' Because maturity is all about the swearwords.

That said, the big problem is that if you know the series at all, any tension is immediately lost. Telltale has a habit of making you feel as though every choice you make in-game is important - even though it often isn't so - yet knowing who these people are and what happens to them robs all the decisions of any impact. You know that Harvey Dent will become Two Face, so you don't care whether or not you make nice with him; whatever you do he's still going to get his face melted and become a villain. Equally you know it doesn't matter whether you choose to help Commissioner Gordon or Vicky Vale, since both of them will be your ally. There's no chance that Gordon or Vale will turn on you, and it won't matter too much if you upset one by helping the other.

Spoiler territory: the best example of this is the Wayne problem. In the first episode it's revealed that Thomas and Martha Wayne may have been in cahoots with the crime bosses that run Gotham, Falcone in particular. As a plot twist it seems powerful: Batman gets his whole motivation, and the money he needs to fight crime, from his parents, and if they turn out to have feet of bloodstained clay then the whole thing's upended. But you know full well Telltale will never stick to that, and even if it was tempted DC would pull the plug. No; the Waynes will turn out to be the sainted martyrs they've always been. My money's on the Wayne Corporation executive who turns up briefly at the Dent fundraiser, and later at the Arkham Asylum ceremony.

Personally as far as long-term plot goes I predict something like this: Penguin set Falcone up for the fall, using Catwoman to do it. Either Penguin or Falcone brought Scarecrow on board - hence the peculiar psycho gas that turns up in the crime scene - for reasons as yet unknown, but probably unpleasant. Penguin seems to be the long-term opponent, but things could change.

Moreover there are very few opportunities to be Batman. There are moments when you leap into action, but the game's rigged so that you never really fail. In only one instance does a bad button press result in Game Over; usually it just means you're not quite as cool as the real thing. Telltale's strength is in emotional strife, not combat, and it shows.

Which is why it doesn't work as an iPad game either.

The iPad touchscreen controls just aren't precise enough to make for a really compelling combat sim. More often than not the button prompt will come up for the quicktime event, you'll stab the screen like a chimp on a caffeine high, and your response will be off or mistimed or whatever it may be. End result: just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing, just not as cool as the real thing. Again and again and again. I don't doubt this worked like magic on consoles, but the iPad doesn't respond well to the chimp stab treatment.

Dishearteningly, it doesn't matter what you do. You'll still win. Granted you'll feel like an idiot and the little Bat-meter at the bottom of the screen, which does nothing except shatter your ego, will not fill up. But you'll still win. For a game all about power wish fulfillment, it robs you of power while at the same time fulfilling no wishes.

Is it worth getting? Ehhh ... if you're a Batman completest, sure. If you're just looking for some iPad fun, pass. I'd recommend The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us over this any day of the week.

See you next Sunday!
 

Not Quite Review Corner: Telltale's Walking Dead, Season 2

This is going to be as spoiler free as I can make it. This title has been released on PC, console and iTunes; I played the iTunes version.

Telltale Games' point-and-click Walking Dead series came out of nowhere a few years back and stole gamers' hearts, the world over. A large part of that is thanks to series mainstay Clementine, the young girl that main character Lee adopts and tries to protect, in a journey across the zombie-infested South. After the first series ended, Telltale released 400 Days, a not-quite-standalone adventure with different characters, but what everyone wanted was a return to the main story.  Now, in the second series, we get our wish, and Clementine is in the starring role. The opening episode of this five part series is All That Remains.

To get the boring bits out of the way first, let's talk mechanics. Anyone who played the first season will have little problem here. There have been some minor improvements but, broadly speaking, the game's QTE sequences and puzzle solving are unchanged. Swipe the screen thus to avoid a zombie, click and swipe to complete an event, combine the right puzzle objects in the right order, and so on. Most of the time it works, and when it doesn't it's easy to go back a step and try again. I did notice an annoying crash bug early on, and it took over half a dozen log-on attempts to start the game. I attribute this to wireless internet signal strength; if I went into a room where the strength was 3 bar, no problem. If  it was 2 bar, it crashed on start up. However once the game began, it could cope with a 2 bar signal.

Story is where this series shines. Again, I shall try my best to avoid spoilers here. You start the game a few months after the conclusion of the previous series, and Clementine seems to be in safe hands. This brief moment of comfort soon vanishes, and Clem has to struggle through without a safety net. In fact, one of the two highlight moments of the first episode happens in the first few minutes; I don't even think the credits had finished rolling.

The second highlight moment, at least for me, takes place about half-way through. I shall say no more than that.

Story structure branches off at several pre-determined points in the narrative, and this is Telltale's big selling point: choices matter. All the decisions you made up to now, in Season 1 and 400 Days, factor into Season 2, for instance; though if you haven't played those games, Telltale can invent a backstory for you. All future decisions count, shaping the story towards whatever nebulous conclusion awaits in the final episode,  No Going Back. While intriguing, one of the chief complaints aimed at the series so far is that decisions don't seem to matter as much as Telltale would have you believe.The opening episode of Season 2 does little to allay those suspicions. If anything, from a story structure perspective the Telltale team played it very safe; there's little to differentiate it from Season 1's opening episode, A New Day.

That might be for the best. Series veterans may prefer a little change, but an opening episode is as much for the new players as it is the old lags. Newbies need a little tender loving care, if they're to keep on playing. Here's hoping things will get more complex, as the series develops.

I'd recommend this entire series to anyone who likes horror, and good storytelling. I find the iPad version ($4.99 on iTunes) particularly handy, despite some of the annoying start-up quirks. The QTEs are much less tedious to deal with; somehow the process makes more sense with a touchscreen.

Enjoy!

Between Two Points

Linearity in scenario design is meant to be one of the bigger no-nos. I can see why. Player participation is key, and if the players don't feel that they have a role to play then any interest they may have had in the adventure quickly dies. This is a problem that affects not just tabletop but also video game design; this week's Zero Punctuation takes Medal of Honor; Warfighter to task for, among other things, carefully scripting the game so that player input is almost nil.

Scenario playtest feedback for my work often contains the complaint, "feels too linear". I particularly liked one report for a short piece due to appear in print soon, that started with the feels-too-linear statement only to say, once the players had become involved, that it didn't shake out in a linear fashion at all. In fact, the players floundered around a bit before finally working their way to the McGuffin; according to the report some of them liked the sensation of not being in control, while others said they could have used more pointers.

I'm not going to downplay linearity. It's definitely a script problem, and it gets all the worse in an environment like a video game, where the player literally cannot escape the boundaries of the plot, whether because invisible walls are blocking off all escape routes or for some other in-game reason. However I don't think it's as much of a issue as people seem to think, particularly in tabletop, and this is why:

Players are kittens.

I mean that. Anyone who's ever actually dealt with a kitten knows that they can be psychotic one minute, biting the hand that feeds it, and docile the next. Kittens wander off into any kind of disaster, wide-eyed and innocent, because they don't see any boundaries even if boundaries are there. They'll cheerfully walk off a table edge, given half a chance; but there's just as much likelihood that they'll find someplace they like the look of and put their heads down for a nap. Kittens do as they please ... and so do players.

The Keeper, knowing this, has to structure the scenario environment to withstand sudden flights of player fancy. The basic premise has to be strong, and supported by useful scenes that support the basic premise. That's the only way to prevent accidents. You wouldn't leave a kitten unattended on a table; why leave players without a safety net?

Say for the sake of discussion the scenario revolves around a murder, a good old-fashioned locked-room body-in-the-library situation. Once the body is discovered, there are certain things it is reasonable for the players, as the detective heroes of the hour, to do. They will want to inspect the body, the room, and the lock. They will want to talk to anyone who might have known the victim, or anyone else who happened to be in the house at the time. They will want to know how the victim died, and if it was something relatively unusual, like a poisoning, they're going to want to find out how easy it is to get hold of the poison and where it might have come from. Each of these issues can be a scene in itself, and each scene can contain clues that lead to the next logical scene. So if the players talk to the victim's lover, and get nothing, but talk to the maid and discover that the victim and the lover quarreled, they're going to want to go back to the lover again. None of this is brain surgery; anyone who's ever seen or read a murder mystery, ever, knows - at least in broad terms - how a murder investigation works.

Now, the Keeper could easily come close to linearity in plotting this situation out. Discovering the body leads to finding out how the murder was done, and from there to who might have done it, and from there to who did, in fact, do the deed. It seems so straightforward, when written out like that. There are variations on the theme, of course; many murder mysteries focus almost exclusively on motive, with an eye to a dramatic confession in the final chapter, while other investigations worry less about that and more about the mechanics of the crime. "That's How," Lord Peter Wimsey might say, "and now we know How, we also know Who."

However linear a scenario of this type might read on paper, it probably isn't going to be linear in practice. That's because you can't rely on the players to be perfect detectives. They're kittens, remember; they'll poke their heads where they please, and hope for the best. Some of them may not try to work out how the victim died, or content themselves with superficial seemings. Some of them may even invent wholly implausible theories and wed themselves to those theories beyond any hope of amicable divorce. The least likely NPC, having wandered into view, suddenly becomes Number One Suspect without even the smallest shred of evidence to convict them. Some will spend all their time chasing up exotic poisons without once confirming the actual cause of death. Some will convince themselves that, against all appearances, the person whose head was bashed in with a shovel actually was eaten by a lion - and this despite there being no lions in the scenario whatsoever.

The only thing a Keeper can do is write a fairly solid plot, and cover all the most reasonable bases. Anything beyond that is up to luck. Linearity in tabletop is, all too often, an illusion, and the Keeper believes in illusions at the Keeper's peril.

There is one other point to make here, and that is that even if a plot is completely on-rails, it doesn't have to be a problem. In fact, it might be the most enjoyable part of the experience. As evidence, I direct you to Telltale Games' survival horror puzzler, The Walking Dead.

If you haven't already played this, I highly recommend it, particularly if you enjoy zombie apocalypse settings. The game is based on the comic - not the TV series - of the same name. You play as Lee Everett, a man on the way to the penitentiary who manages somehow to struggle out of a car wreck into a world gone mad. Along the way he picks up a fellow survivor, an eight-year-old named Clementine, and together they do their best to pick their way through a very hostile Georgia.

It's grabbed a lot of people's attention this year, particularly for its excellent writing, but if there's one criticism that stands out above all the rest, it's aggressive railroading. You, as the player, have very little choice in what happens next. Scene follows scene like soldiers on parade, and if there is a puzzle in the way before you can get to the next scene, it usually isn't that much of an obstacle. Before you know it you're back on the train again, chugging away towards the next plot point.

Yet I, as player, don't have a problem with that; I've been enthralled by The Walking Dead since I learned I could pick it up on iPad, and just finished episode 4 this weekend. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for 5; at least two major plot points reaaaaaally need resolving, and I won't be happy until they are. I suspect most fans of the game feel the same way.

It wouldn't have nearly the same kind of impact if it wasn't masterfully written, and that's the key issue here. Even if you are marching from scene to scene without deviation, it's your interaction with the world and the characters in it that makes the experience so enjoyable. What happens next to Ken, to Carly, to Lilly or Doug, how Clementine reacts, how you react to her, whether your morals are strong - or flexible - enough to withstand what's coming next, is what makes this game a stand-out.

The straight line between two points isn't an issue, and while linearity can be an easy plot criticism I'm not sure it's entirely valid. To my mind, using "linear" as a scenario descriptor is actually a cover for something else, and that something else is "badly written." We know bad writing when we see it; flat characters, unbelievable plot points, disjointed or facile settings, are all issues that fiction has had to deal with over the years.

But those issues are the problem, not the linearity - or otherwise - of the plot. A straight-line plot with excellent writing can work brilliantly; a badly written sandbox will often fail and, where it does succeed, anything good it manages to pull off is a matter of luck, not design.