I'm going to have a certain sinister tour guide show up in my Dracula Dossier campaign, and I've decided his role is butler to one of the significant antagonists. It occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to discuss butlers and domestics in general, since although they're staples of this kind of fiction their role, particularly in the modern day, is poorly understood.
In the Victorian period, a butler would be a senior domestic, if not the senior domestic, in an upper middle class or plain old upper class household. This is a managerial post, in that while the butler may have a specific domestic role to perform within the house, his major function is actually to supervise everyone else. There isn't a single part of the household's operation that he - and in the Victorian period it is almost always he - would not have a hand in. One of his more important functions is keeper of the keys; he knows how to get into every door, pantry or cellar, and frequently it is he who locks the house at night and opens it in the morning. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why crooked butlers are such a staple of early detective fiction. Someone who can get into and out of any room is perfectly suited for the role of burglar, or murderer.
Otherwise, a butler's role is fluid, and may depend on the house's peculiarities or habits. A house of this type forms its personality over generations. There is a way that Things are Done, and it's the butler's task to ensure that those Things keep being Done in that way from now until the end of time. Carson, the mainstay of Downton Abbey, is a traditionalist for a reason. It's not just his nature. It's his job.
One thing a butler of this period tends not to get involved in is the running of the estate, as opposed to the house. The house is usually only one part of a larger whole, and it's the estate steward who presides over that whole. However the steward does not outrank the butler. In most cases, the two would barely have a reason to interact.
Socially the butler is at the top of a very complex chain, and expects deference and respect from everyone beneath him on that chain. Which is understandable, since a good butler has worked many years, if not decades, to get to that point, and is as senior as you can possibly get, in managerial terms. There is no training for his job; he has had to learn from the bottom up, the equivalent of earning a Field Marshal's baton after joining as an enlisted man. A good butler is worth his weight in gold, and his employers recognize that fact. They will do almost anything to keep him, and if a butler leaves a house it's a minor scandal in itself. Everyone is going to want to know why.
This kind of position is a vocation more than a job. People who aren't born in domestic service don't often aim to become one, but for those who do, it's the summit of their career.
In game terms, a Victorian butler would definitely have Bureaucracy, High Society, and a Preparedness pool or the equivalent. Depending on the nature of his role within the house he may have unexpected talents. A butler used to dealing with correspondence, for example, may have a talent for Forgery, developed after many years of signing people's names to documents.
A modern butler is a different animal. The role is significantly expanded, if anything, from its Victorian roots. No longer are butlers limited to looking after the house and servants. The butler is more of a major domo, in that he or she - and it is much more often she, these days - looks after almost every aspect of the client's existence. The role may involve light cooking, balancing chequebooks or credit card statements, keeping diaries, handling public relations and marketing, managing property portfolios, and generally looking after a significant part of the client's life both personal and professional.
This sort of butler has probably had formal training of some kind. There are various schools which offer it, some more respected than others, but one key thing to bear in mind is that the butler probably didn't start life as a domestic or child of a domestic. They would have come into the role from another profession, and that might have been almost anything. If you, as Keeper, want a butler to have been a solider, musician, journalist or what-have-you, there's no reason not to.
The client list has expanded significantly as well. No longer are they exclusively upper class, from generations of landed gentry. Now it might be a celebrity, a hotel chain, an executive, a cruise ship line, and so on.
The butler's role may be dependent as much on social mores as on need for a trained servant. In the Middle East, for example, the client may ask for a female butler, since the butler's duties will involve looking after female members of the family. In China, the role may be more geared towards property management and public relations, since the job involves looking after apartment blocks, yachts and aircraft.
While the traditional attire is formal wear, this is less and less common. Smart business or smart casual is the more likely dress code. In America, this may be polo shirts and slacks, while in Indonesia it might be a sarong, and so on.
The most important difference between the modern and the Victorian version is that a modern butler is not a traditionalist. There are no rituals formed over generations, nor is the way Things are Done in this house of particular importance. Rather, the butler maintains standards. Those standards are going to vary from place to place. A butler in Hollywood is going to have a very different idea of the nature of the profession than one in Beijing, or in London. Moreover the modern butler is going to travel, and be used to travel. There's no such thing as a job for life with one family any more. This year, Paris; next year, who knows?
Finally, a modern butler is probably going to be significantly more wealthy than his Victorian counterpart. People pay a high premium for that kind of service. In return, absolute discretion is a must. In the age of always-on media the butler is in a unique position to spill all kinds of beans. It's the butler's job to keep his or her mouth shut, a silent Twitter feed, and an innocuous or nonexistent Facebook profile. Seen but not heard takes on a whole new meaning.
In game terms, a butler of this type will have a similar skill set to the Victorian model, but with some additions. Electronic Surveillance and Data Recovery is very likely, as is Accounting and Languages. Flattery is probably a must, for dealing with celebrities and the like. While a butler is less likely to be involved in up close and personal combat than most, it's possible that, as part of his role as security head, that the butler has a pool in Shooting or Hand-to-Hand. Depending on the work environment the butler may also know something about piloting a ship, a plane, or be an expert driver.
Finally, how about a scenario seed?
This takes place nominally in London, though it could be adapted for other settings. There is a house in a very exclusive and expensive district that is hardly ever occupied, not unlike those Bishop's Avenue mansions mentioned in a previous post. Miss Tyler is the butler in charge of this and several other properties scattered across Europe, allegedly for a Middle Eastern family paranoid to the nth degree about its privacy. Occasionally the daughters of the family arrive for a long weekend, or couple of weeks, and when that happens their long luxury vehicle with its tinted windows cruises out and back like a tiger on the hunt.
Miss Tyler's role, apart from looking after the house, is to secure entertainment - and snacks - for the daughters, who may or may not be from the Middle East. A hijab can be an excellent disguise, after all. She delegates this to Steve, the house man and pretty boy, who cruises the nightspots looking for talent when he knows that the daughters are due. The problem is that Steve's party lifestyle has engendered one too many bad habits, and he's gotten a little too sloppy in his procedures. One of the entertainment has escaped from the carefully crafted dungeon underneath the property, and now it's Miss Tyler's job to deal with the problem. Probably also Steve, if it comes to it.
The protagonists get involved when they discover, or have their attention drawn to, Steve's last victim but one, whose corpse ended up in a landfill. Clues found at that scene lead to Steve, but by the time the protagonists catch up with him Miss Tyler is already involved. If the protagonists can rescue the latest entertainment they could get enough information (and evidence) to shut the whole operation down. But what happens when the daughters turn up expecting their usual weekend's fun?
That's enough for now. Enjoy!
Sunday, 6 March 2016
Sunday, 28 February 2016
The Black Fish (Night's Black Agents)
Back in January when talking about piracy I mentioned a rule I have for character backgrounds: keep it to one descriptive sentence. This week I'm going to talk about how to make that description interesting, and in the process provide a scenario seed for Night's Black Agents.
This Guardian article about illegal fishing and the people who fight it is worth a read. Briefly: though there are laws which are meant to prevent or ameliorate environmental damage through over-fishing, these laws are routinely ignored and the authorities are over-stretched. There's enough money in the trade to attract organized crime; the same people who smuggle drugs across the sea are keenly interested in the millions of euro available for, say, sending tuna and other delicacies to Asia. An environmentalist named Van der Werf has organized a self-appointed marine protection detail to counter this, the Black Fish.
The Fish are ordinary people who use equipment available on the open market to track, identify and record evidence concerning illegal fishermen and the boats they use. Van der Werf uses tactics perfected by the Royal Observer Corps during the Second World War, and unleashes dozens of observers with one task: gather information, however you can. Selfie sticks, drones, social engineering, the works. If it's not recorded, as Van der Werf is quick to point out, it might as well not have happened; the main focus is on gathering enough credible information to secure a conviction.
All of which sounds like an excellent introduction for a Night's Black Agent operative. This template could easily fit the Investigator, Analyst or Asset Handler. Turned on its head, it could also be made to fit a Mule.
The point being this: that when you rely on real world concepts to design your character, it adds to the game. Anyone can be an Analyst who studied the Mafia before becoming a vampire hunter. What does that mean, really? Studied the Mafia doing what, exactly? Now you know what: studied the trade in illegal fishing off the coast of Italy, particularly Sicily. In so doing, Interpol relied on your evidence to prosecute a human trafficking ring, and that's where things got seriously weird.
Or, in once sentence: I was a member of an ecological group investigating illegal fishing in Sicily, who stumbled onto the larger conspiracy when a human trafficking ring was exposed.
Alternatively, for the Mule: I was a Sicilian fisherman who worked with the Mafia as part of an illegal seafood harvesting ring, who angered the wrong people when a human trafficking operation went south.
A character archetype like this one is probably going to have a decent Driving or Piloting pool, but there are all kinds of options. Electronic Surveillance is a natural fit, as is Infiltration, Outdoor Survival, Streetwise, Conceal and Bullshit Detector. Flying drones is a bit of an odd one, and could fit in either Piloting or Driving; Driving specifically says it covers remote control vehicles, but under the circumstances Piloting seems the more obvious choice.
Now, about that scenario seed ...
This takes place off the coast of Sciacca, a port town with a medieval past. Among other things, it's famous as the epicenter of what's called the Mediterranean Scene, which according to the internet is a Sicilian Black Metal movement. The Hook is this: an eco-warrior group - fictional, the Sea Foxes - which had been cooperating with the local authorities, is suddenly brought low when three of its members are gruesomely murdered in the same night, with signs that indicate to a Vampirologist that something otherworldly may have been behind it. What happened?
The Node operating in Sciacca, a smuggling ring, is feuding with a rival Node, as per Double Tap. The rival thought it would be amusing to start a fight on the smuggler Node's turf, but things got out of hand when its scheme to disrupt things at a Black Metal concert and beat up a few eco-warriors, thus making the eco warriors think that the smugglers were retaliating for squealing to the coast guard, resulted in three deaths and the unintended creation of a feral vampire.
This feral, previously Dutch agitator and anarchist Van den Zwolle, is completely out of control and running on almost zero Stability. [Therefore there's a very small chance to reason with what's left of his personality, which could save a protagonist in a desperate situation.] Van den Zwolle, the former leader of the Sea Foxes, is tracking down his former friends and vampirizing them, with a view to eventually taking out the smuggler Node in a bloody confrontation.
Naturally this isn't what the rival Node intended, but it's keeping very quiet lest this whole mess be revealed to be its fault. Meanwhile both the smuggler Node and the protagonists will want to track down the ferals and eliminate them before things really get out of hand. Van den Zwolle isn't acting rationally or carefully, but he's a cunning devil who's determined not to go gentle into that sanguinary night ...
Enjoy!
This Guardian article about illegal fishing and the people who fight it is worth a read. Briefly: though there are laws which are meant to prevent or ameliorate environmental damage through over-fishing, these laws are routinely ignored and the authorities are over-stretched. There's enough money in the trade to attract organized crime; the same people who smuggle drugs across the sea are keenly interested in the millions of euro available for, say, sending tuna and other delicacies to Asia. An environmentalist named Van der Werf has organized a self-appointed marine protection detail to counter this, the Black Fish.
The Fish are ordinary people who use equipment available on the open market to track, identify and record evidence concerning illegal fishermen and the boats they use. Van der Werf uses tactics perfected by the Royal Observer Corps during the Second World War, and unleashes dozens of observers with one task: gather information, however you can. Selfie sticks, drones, social engineering, the works. If it's not recorded, as Van der Werf is quick to point out, it might as well not have happened; the main focus is on gathering enough credible information to secure a conviction.
All of which sounds like an excellent introduction for a Night's Black Agent operative. This template could easily fit the Investigator, Analyst or Asset Handler. Turned on its head, it could also be made to fit a Mule.
The point being this: that when you rely on real world concepts to design your character, it adds to the game. Anyone can be an Analyst who studied the Mafia before becoming a vampire hunter. What does that mean, really? Studied the Mafia doing what, exactly? Now you know what: studied the trade in illegal fishing off the coast of Italy, particularly Sicily. In so doing, Interpol relied on your evidence to prosecute a human trafficking ring, and that's where things got seriously weird.
Or, in once sentence: I was a member of an ecological group investigating illegal fishing in Sicily, who stumbled onto the larger conspiracy when a human trafficking ring was exposed.
Alternatively, for the Mule: I was a Sicilian fisherman who worked with the Mafia as part of an illegal seafood harvesting ring, who angered the wrong people when a human trafficking operation went south.
A character archetype like this one is probably going to have a decent Driving or Piloting pool, but there are all kinds of options. Electronic Surveillance is a natural fit, as is Infiltration, Outdoor Survival, Streetwise, Conceal and Bullshit Detector. Flying drones is a bit of an odd one, and could fit in either Piloting or Driving; Driving specifically says it covers remote control vehicles, but under the circumstances Piloting seems the more obvious choice.
Now, about that scenario seed ...
This takes place off the coast of Sciacca, a port town with a medieval past. Among other things, it's famous as the epicenter of what's called the Mediterranean Scene, which according to the internet is a Sicilian Black Metal movement. The Hook is this: an eco-warrior group - fictional, the Sea Foxes - which had been cooperating with the local authorities, is suddenly brought low when three of its members are gruesomely murdered in the same night, with signs that indicate to a Vampirologist that something otherworldly may have been behind it. What happened?
The Node operating in Sciacca, a smuggling ring, is feuding with a rival Node, as per Double Tap. The rival thought it would be amusing to start a fight on the smuggler Node's turf, but things got out of hand when its scheme to disrupt things at a Black Metal concert and beat up a few eco-warriors, thus making the eco warriors think that the smugglers were retaliating for squealing to the coast guard, resulted in three deaths and the unintended creation of a feral vampire.
This feral, previously Dutch agitator and anarchist Van den Zwolle, is completely out of control and running on almost zero Stability. [Therefore there's a very small chance to reason with what's left of his personality, which could save a protagonist in a desperate situation.] Van den Zwolle, the former leader of the Sea Foxes, is tracking down his former friends and vampirizing them, with a view to eventually taking out the smuggler Node in a bloody confrontation.
Naturally this isn't what the rival Node intended, but it's keeping very quiet lest this whole mess be revealed to be its fault. Meanwhile both the smuggler Node and the protagonists will want to track down the ferals and eliminate them before things really get out of hand. Van den Zwolle isn't acting rationally or carefully, but he's a cunning devil who's determined not to go gentle into that sanguinary night ...
Enjoy!
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Baader-Meinhof (Night's Black Agents)
Unfortunately I've had to end my Dracula Dossier game early due to the sudden departure of two out of four players. As the group hadn't progressed that far, it seemed more fitting to end that campaign and begin a new one with the two remaining players, than it did to struggle on with the two remaining characters. It would have been a different thing had they encountered any Node above the lowest rank, or been involved in the underlying plot.
I thought that I'd take advantage of the recent Field Manual release - I believe it's only for Kickstarter backers in .pdf form now, but the rest of you will see it soon - to switch viewpoints and have them play Edom field agents. For their first mission the characters will be off to Poland to investigate a certain Nazi ghost train. However that's not the focus of this post.
As one of the minor obstacles the characters will have to overcome before digging into the main meat of the narrative, I intend to pit them against Alraune and a few of her friends. Alraune is interested in the ghost train because she believes some records, perhaps even physical samples, relating to her old project is aboard. As for what she's been up to since the war, I intend to get the old Baader-Meinhof gang involved.
Baader-Meinhof is an early form of what became the German terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF), and I'm taking inspiration from the film Baader-Meinhof Komplex based on the novel by journalist and former Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust.
Having watched it, I came away saddened by the colossal waste, of energy, lives and hope. None of the principals seem inspiring, particularly miserable whiner Andreas Baader, and I found it curious that Bruno Ganz played the intelligence service chief set to capture or eliminate the group. Not that Ganz did a poor job - his performance is, as always, excellent - but I could not forget that four years prior he had captivated the world with his performance as Hitler. Given that the RAF was driven in no small part by anti-Nazi sentiment, Ganz's performance seemed to verge on stunt casting.
The RAF was - or perhaps is, since there are rumors that it is active again - a far-left group determined to resist the authoritarian German state, controlled at that time by the Hitler generation, if not actual ex-Nazis. "The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it," says Aust. "You see your action as the resistance that your parents did not put up."
It had a hard-core Marxist tinge to its ideology, and its members trained with Palestinian liberation groups. Dividing itself into Commandos, each group knew very little about the other groups, allowing it freedom of operation without having to worry about its secrets being betrayed by its members, or its organization threatened when its leadership is captured. Even when the founding members Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof were captured, the RAF was able to continue operations almost without interruption.
All told, the RAF lasted until the 1990s, by which time it was in its third generation. By that point the original team had committed suicide - or been murdered, depending on which story you believe - and the second generation had bathed in blood during the German Autumn of kidnappings and murders, only to sputter out by 1980. The third generation carried the torch, but this lacked glamour after the collapse of Soviet Russia. It's hard to convince yourself that Leninism is the way forward when the USSR dissolves.
Though the third generation is supposed to have declared itself kaput in 1998, recent bank robberies seem to suggest that the spirit of revolution is not yet dead. Though it's probably reaching for the Viagra right about now, since at best its active members must be in their late fifties if not early sixties.
Alraune, being a semi-immortal with every reason to dislike the German authorities, would fit right in with Baader-Meinhof. So here's where things get fictional.
Alraune joins the group in the 1970s. It accepts her unquestioningly, at least in part because she ingratiates herself with Baader and his girlfriend Ensslin. In return, she uses the RAF to help track down anything and everything the Nazis may have collected or uncovered about her past as a Abteilung IIIb experiment. She's confident she recovered most of that data back in 1911, but her abiding paranoia is that she missed something, or that some other group was able to replicate the experiment.
One advantage Alraune has is that she can die, and be reborn. On at least two occasions with the RAF she arranged for her current persona to be shot dead in an encounter with the German authorities, only to reappear a short while later as a grieving relative or friend. The great thing about the RAF's decision to divide into Commandos, from her perspective, is that the group finds it difficult to compare notes. This allows her to infiltrate Commando after Commando without arousing too much suspicion, and she uses her own innate abilities to make up the shortfall.
Her current group is the (fictional) Kevin Lynch Commando, named after a dead Irish hunger striker, and she's playing the daughter of a previous incarnation. The Lynch is responsible for two sniper attacks, three kidnappings and one attempted kidnapping, and two bombings. Its last known action took place in 1997, when it was involved in a botched bank robbery that led to the deaths of two of its members. The two dead included Alraune's then-current incarnation, and the robbery failed because Alraune tipped off the authorities. She could see which way the wind was blowing, and thought it was time to bow out.
Though she believes the current German authorities know little or nothing about her, that isn't entirely true. DNA profiling wasn't even on the horizon when she first took up arms in 1970, but things have changed since then, and several samples of her unique biology were retrieved from crime scenes. Also, although in the early days she was careful to ensure that the records concerning autopsies of her dead personas were removed from the record, in 1997 she got a little sloppy. Some biological samples and computerized records escaped the purge.
Hearing about the Polish Nazi ghost train, and worried that she might have missed something when she first investigated Project Giant in 1946, she decides to go after the train. However she feels she needs muscle so she reactivates her old comrades, claiming to be the daughter of her 1997 persona. Persuading them that there really is Nazi gold in them thar hills isn't too difficult; as former terrorists they're all living hand to mouth and desperate for money. It seems almost poetic justice to them that Nazi gold should pay for their golden years.
And that's where complications ensue ...
Enjoy!
I thought that I'd take advantage of the recent Field Manual release - I believe it's only for Kickstarter backers in .pdf form now, but the rest of you will see it soon - to switch viewpoints and have them play Edom field agents. For their first mission the characters will be off to Poland to investigate a certain Nazi ghost train. However that's not the focus of this post.
As one of the minor obstacles the characters will have to overcome before digging into the main meat of the narrative, I intend to pit them against Alraune and a few of her friends. Alraune is interested in the ghost train because she believes some records, perhaps even physical samples, relating to her old project is aboard. As for what she's been up to since the war, I intend to get the old Baader-Meinhof gang involved.
Baader-Meinhof is an early form of what became the German terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF), and I'm taking inspiration from the film Baader-Meinhof Komplex based on the novel by journalist and former Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust.
Having watched it, I came away saddened by the colossal waste, of energy, lives and hope. None of the principals seem inspiring, particularly miserable whiner Andreas Baader, and I found it curious that Bruno Ganz played the intelligence service chief set to capture or eliminate the group. Not that Ganz did a poor job - his performance is, as always, excellent - but I could not forget that four years prior he had captivated the world with his performance as Hitler. Given that the RAF was driven in no small part by anti-Nazi sentiment, Ganz's performance seemed to verge on stunt casting.
The RAF was - or perhaps is, since there are rumors that it is active again - a far-left group determined to resist the authoritarian German state, controlled at that time by the Hitler generation, if not actual ex-Nazis. "The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it," says Aust. "You see your action as the resistance that your parents did not put up."
It had a hard-core Marxist tinge to its ideology, and its members trained with Palestinian liberation groups. Dividing itself into Commandos, each group knew very little about the other groups, allowing it freedom of operation without having to worry about its secrets being betrayed by its members, or its organization threatened when its leadership is captured. Even when the founding members Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof were captured, the RAF was able to continue operations almost without interruption.
All told, the RAF lasted until the 1990s, by which time it was in its third generation. By that point the original team had committed suicide - or been murdered, depending on which story you believe - and the second generation had bathed in blood during the German Autumn of kidnappings and murders, only to sputter out by 1980. The third generation carried the torch, but this lacked glamour after the collapse of Soviet Russia. It's hard to convince yourself that Leninism is the way forward when the USSR dissolves.
Though the third generation is supposed to have declared itself kaput in 1998, recent bank robberies seem to suggest that the spirit of revolution is not yet dead. Though it's probably reaching for the Viagra right about now, since at best its active members must be in their late fifties if not early sixties.
Alraune, being a semi-immortal with every reason to dislike the German authorities, would fit right in with Baader-Meinhof. So here's where things get fictional.
Alraune joins the group in the 1970s. It accepts her unquestioningly, at least in part because she ingratiates herself with Baader and his girlfriend Ensslin. In return, she uses the RAF to help track down anything and everything the Nazis may have collected or uncovered about her past as a Abteilung IIIb experiment. She's confident she recovered most of that data back in 1911, but her abiding paranoia is that she missed something, or that some other group was able to replicate the experiment.
One advantage Alraune has is that she can die, and be reborn. On at least two occasions with the RAF she arranged for her current persona to be shot dead in an encounter with the German authorities, only to reappear a short while later as a grieving relative or friend. The great thing about the RAF's decision to divide into Commandos, from her perspective, is that the group finds it difficult to compare notes. This allows her to infiltrate Commando after Commando without arousing too much suspicion, and she uses her own innate abilities to make up the shortfall.
Her current group is the (fictional) Kevin Lynch Commando, named after a dead Irish hunger striker, and she's playing the daughter of a previous incarnation. The Lynch is responsible for two sniper attacks, three kidnappings and one attempted kidnapping, and two bombings. Its last known action took place in 1997, when it was involved in a botched bank robbery that led to the deaths of two of its members. The two dead included Alraune's then-current incarnation, and the robbery failed because Alraune tipped off the authorities. She could see which way the wind was blowing, and thought it was time to bow out.
Though she believes the current German authorities know little or nothing about her, that isn't entirely true. DNA profiling wasn't even on the horizon when she first took up arms in 1970, but things have changed since then, and several samples of her unique biology were retrieved from crime scenes. Also, although in the early days she was careful to ensure that the records concerning autopsies of her dead personas were removed from the record, in 1997 she got a little sloppy. Some biological samples and computerized records escaped the purge.
Hearing about the Polish Nazi ghost train, and worried that she might have missed something when she first investigated Project Giant in 1946, she decides to go after the train. However she feels she needs muscle so she reactivates her old comrades, claiming to be the daughter of her 1997 persona. Persuading them that there really is Nazi gold in them thar hills isn't too difficult; as former terrorists they're all living hand to mouth and desperate for money. It seems almost poetic justice to them that Nazi gold should pay for their golden years.
And that's where complications ensue ...
Enjoy!
Sunday, 14 February 2016
Silent Hill 2: How to Design Survival Horror (Fear Itself)
Last time I talked about designing Silent Hill for Pelgrane's Fear Itself. Now I'd like to spend some time discussing what makes Silent Hill tick, and to do that I'm going to talk about survival horror as a genre.
Survival horror, appropriately enough, is a subgenre of horror in which the survival of the protagonist is what drives the narrative and provides the scares. It isn't about external threat - though there are plenty of those - but about the internal, as the vulnerable, easily killed protagonist tries desperately to exist in a world inimical not just to all life but to the protagonist's life specifically. There's a healthy dose of paranoia here, but then, is it really paranoia if the world is out to get you?
What in Silent Hill makes this apparent?
Always bear in mind that the two most important aspects of survival horror are these:
First, it is always about the character, not the situation. Nobody cares about a zombie apocalypse if there are no brains to munch on, nobody cares about dinosaurs on the rampage if all the humans have already escaped via helicopter, and nobody, but nobody, cares about a spooky castle on a desolate peak if the protagonists skip past it and go on vacation in Monaco instead. This isn't about sinister plots or grand Illuminati-style machinations. This is about what happens to ordinary people when plunged into extraordinary circumstances.
Second, not only is the threat real, it will almost certainly be fatal for someone. Probably several someones, in group-style play. When six co-eds vacation in that charming little cottage in the woods by the lake, it's practically guaranteed that only one or two, at the very most, will come back to tell the tale. Or to take the Silent Hill route, it's perfectly possible for James Sunderland to survive every single threat the town has to throw at him, and still have his life ruined.
Now, enough of that, I think. Next time, something completely different!
Survival horror, appropriately enough, is a subgenre of horror in which the survival of the protagonist is what drives the narrative and provides the scares. It isn't about external threat - though there are plenty of those - but about the internal, as the vulnerable, easily killed protagonist tries desperately to exist in a world inimical not just to all life but to the protagonist's life specifically. There's a healthy dose of paranoia here, but then, is it really paranoia if the world is out to get you?
What in Silent Hill makes this apparent?
- Even the normal is a little weird. There's a moment in Silent Hill 2 where James Sunderland explores Neely's Bar. Like everything else in Silent Hill, Neely's is deserted. However there's an odd note painted roughly on the window: There Was A HOLE Here. Now It's Gone. The meaning of this note is unexplained, leaving it up to the player to decide just how to interpret it. However the mere fact that it exists begs all kinds of questions, the most obvious being, who wrote it? Who's supposed to read it? Is it like graffiti, a message for anyone, or was it intended for James specifically? There's nothing more normal than a bar, but adding that extra touch makes it seem somehow other, perhaps even tied specifically into the threat that may yet engulf James. This crops up again and again, perhaps best in the town itself, where you can wander the streets only to find that your path is cut off by a vast chasm. How did that happen? What kind of tectonic event can cause a rift like that, and yet leave the buildings roundabout still standing? Or what about the fog that swallows the town whole, or the way everyone else you meet seems either to accept the situation or to perceive things very differently than you ...
- The weird is very weird. If you play the game more than once, the characters get the chance to pick up and use different items in different ways. Often this means getting a better weapon, perhaps a chainsaw or a flamethrower. However in Silent Hill 2 James has the option of picking up a peculiar star stone which, if he uses it in exactly the right way in exactly the right places, opens up the true meaning of reality. Again, as with point 1, there's a strong presentment that these things are set here specifically for James to find, to use, to explore, further establishing the central concept that nothing happens by chance. The strange, twisted creatures James encounters are designed especially for him; they play on his frustrated sexuality, his darker side. But who or what did this? Or was it James himself ...
- Sure, you can find weapons, but don't expect them to help. Stick with a nail in it, pistol, shotgun, rifle; all are useful tools, but when the chips are down it won't matter what you're armed with. The real threat here is from within. That's why Silent Hill often has a suicide option as one of the alternate endings. In Gumshoe terms your dwindling Stability is the problem you'll have to manage, or die trying.
- Using Night of the Living Dead as an example, although zombies are clawing at the walls the real threat is that posed by your fellow survivors. They all fight like cats in a sack, convinced beyond reason that their plan is the best plan. They have a rifle, a defensible position, molotov cocktails, and what happens? Chaos and blood, that's what happens. In survival horror if you depend on guns to see you through, you might as well climb into your grave and beat the rush.
- Supplies are limited. In Silent Hill the protagonist eats health packs and drug ampules like they were candy. There's never enough. You wander the streets half dead, because you only have one or two health packs left and you know, just know that you need to save health packs more than you need to actually be healthy right now. In Gumshoe, items like these might count as free Medic pools, perhaps 1 point for Health Drinks, 3 for Health Packs and 5 for ampules. Funny thing about those pools; in my experience players either consume them early and then regret it later, when they've got nothing, or they save them and save them and save them, waiting against the time when they're desperate. Which, oddly enough, is exactly how players of survival horror video games behave.
- The enemy is very dangerous. The external threats the player faces are always real. There are no Mooks in survival horror. Some may hit harder than others, but they all hit hard, and you misjudge the threat at your peril. The same applies to traps and other potentially harmful situations. Stick your hand in the wrong place and you may lose a few fingers. Not that this ever stopped James Sunderland, but still ...
- Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is usually bad for you. As in you specifically, not you, the abstract. This goes back to the Neely's Bar note. When something happens, when you go to a location, when you encounter a Shadow, these places, people and incidents exist because of you. They are linked to you, and often are a reflection of your mental state. As in, your rapidly deteriorating mental state. This is the polar opposite of Lovecraftian horror, in which the whole point is how powerless we are, how insignificant, in the face of cosmic forces. Nothing could be further from the truth here. In Silent Hill, and to a great degree in survival horror as a genre, the protagonist is the most important person in the entire universe. Without that person, none of this could happen. In fact, in Silent Hill there's good reason for thinking that the entire mess is the protagonist's own making.
- The cavalry isn't coming, by the way. If you stick yourself in a cupboard somewhere and huddle up, crying softly, waiting for the police or the army to rescue you, good luck and God bless. Just remember what happened when the survivors in Return of the Living Dead called the telephone number printed on the side of the can of toxic waste.
Always bear in mind that the two most important aspects of survival horror are these:
First, it is always about the character, not the situation. Nobody cares about a zombie apocalypse if there are no brains to munch on, nobody cares about dinosaurs on the rampage if all the humans have already escaped via helicopter, and nobody, but nobody, cares about a spooky castle on a desolate peak if the protagonists skip past it and go on vacation in Monaco instead. This isn't about sinister plots or grand Illuminati-style machinations. This is about what happens to ordinary people when plunged into extraordinary circumstances.
Second, not only is the threat real, it will almost certainly be fatal for someone. Probably several someones, in group-style play. When six co-eds vacation in that charming little cottage in the woods by the lake, it's practically guaranteed that only one or two, at the very most, will come back to tell the tale. Or to take the Silent Hill route, it's perfectly possible for James Sunderland to survive every single threat the town has to throw at him, and still have his life ruined.
Now, enough of that, I think. Next time, something completely different!
Sunday, 7 February 2016
Silent Hill (Fear Itself)
Over the New Year's I tried to play Silent Hill 2 all the way through to the end. I had no choice; my copy is an aged PC version that, among its many bugs, wouldn't let me save, so it was play through till death or not play at all. I've seldom enjoyed a horror title more, and even half-bust as my copy is, that old corpse didn't disappoint.
For those who never had the pleasure, Silent Hill is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Japanese studio Konami. It's set in the one horse town that is Silent Hill, populated only by shadows and the damned. There's a map of the surrounding area, but you can't rely on it. There were other people here, some of whom are dead. The others? Well, you probably want to avoid them if you possibly can ...
People who come here seldom find what they wanted to find, and are lucky if they get out alive at all. Sometimes they stumble in, like Harry Mason, who just wanted to find his missing daughter. Some of them deliberately make their way there, like James Sunderland, who wants to track down his supposedly dead wife, or Heather Mason, who'd leave Silent Hill alone if only it would do her the same courtesy. Or you could be like Harry Townsend, who just wakes up one day and finds that he's trapped in his apartment, with no real idea why or how.
Silent Hill 2 is the best of the series. The rest? Eh, they have their moments, but none of them are as consistently frightening as James Sunderland's trip into nightmare. It's one of the most effective horror games of all time, and for good reason. No other game, and certainly none of the other Silent Hill titles, is as good at reaching into your mind and making you think; and once you do that, the shadows can get into your brain. After which, there's no chance at all.
This game partly inspired the hot mess that is the Silent Hill movie, with Sean Bean playing a Sunderland-esque role. Bean's a reasonable physical match, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it. The terrible thing is, there are times when it becomes a really good movie, only to disappoint the viewer in the very next scene.
What makes Silent Hill work? Ultimately its character. You believe in James, Harry, Heather and the rest. You understand what they want, and why they're in the situation that they're in. Those strong characters then get to bounce off the weirdness that is the town, which will explore and exploit all of their flaws, until they break.
Silent Hill the town is a very odd place, even more so than it seems at first glance; and at first glance it's pretty damn odd. It's shrouded in mist and darkness, so you can't see all of it, and it's easy to get lost. Your initial impression is that it's a one horse burg, the kind of place that hasn't many young people because they all move off to the big city as soon as they can. Maybe it had a past, but it definitely doesn't have a future.
Then you begin to explore, and to wonder. How many one horse towns have apartment buildings? A fully functioning hospital and a separate medical clinic? A prison, a Civil War museum, a Historical Society, a lakefront Hotel, a funfair, a park? Suddenly it seems much bigger than before. But where are all the people? Yes, there are abandoned cars here and there, and signs that something cataclysmic happened. But there are far fewer corpses than you'd expect if there was a natural disaster, and far fewer survivors.
One of the first living people James Sunderland meets is Angela, whose importance you only really understand when you see her for the last time, at the end. Without wishing to spoil, it becomes clear that the Silent Hill she experiences is a completely different kind of Silent Hill to the one James has had to fight through. Here's her final scene. "You see it too? For me, it's always like this."
This demonstrates two very important truths: first, that Silent Hill is different for everyone. Second, that everyone in Silent Hill gets the experience that they think they deserve.
Ultimately, this is about Hell. But this isn't about scales being balanced or some kind of judgement. This is about the punishment we make for ourselves.
Angela sees the things she sees not simply because she's being punished, but because she thinks she deserves to be punished, and in that particular way. Taking that example, James too must see the things he sees for the same reasons. Which suggests that Silent Hill, the town, bends its appearance, its essential being, to the expectations of people like James and Angela. There's a Hotel, yes, but perhaps it only exists because James needs it to exist. For Angela, there may be no Hotel. She's clearly somewhere, in that final scene, but it might not be the same somewhere that James thinks he's in.
In that case, Silent Hill is just a set, a dreamscape. For James, the Hospital is clearly designed as a insane asylum. For someone else it might be an ordinary hospital, or a school, or some other building. Two people can be in the same place, the same room, and yet have completely different experiences.
Moreover this malleability doesn't stop at the streets and buildings. As James proves in his relationship with Mary not all the people are really people. But as with the environments, these phantoms aren't created by a god or devil figure. It's people like James who invent them out of nothing at all. Ultimately all they are is a reflection of the protagonist's mental state. Nor are they there to be helpful; after all, this is about punishment, not salvation.
So taking all that on board, how can you, as Keeper, simulate Silent Hill with a ruleset such as Fear Itself?
Fear Itself has at its core the idea that ordinary people, without special abilities, magic or some kind of overarching Destiny (with that all-important capital D), can be plunged into terror beyond their imagining or control. This works nicely with Silent Hill's insistence that its protagonists be ordinary people, without powers or indeed weapons beyond the sticks and items they can scavenge. Often its scenarios are designed to be one-shots, which is perfect for a Silent Hill session. Also, in its character creation mechanic the players are encouraged to identify and describe The Worst Thing You Ever Did, which fits perfectly into the Silent Hill punishment trope.
Finally, the characters are encouraged to develop a goal, and again, this is perfect for Silent Hill, since its protagonists are usually very goal-oriented. James' goal is to find out what's going on with his supposedly dead wife, for example. Heather's is to find out what Silent Hill wants from her, and incidentally to avenge her dead father figure Harry Mason, so that's both a goal and a Drive in one easy package.
My suggestion would be that, in addition to developing a character, each player also develop something that the Wraith RPG would call a Shadow. Don't worry about Stats for these creatures; the main points are the archetype, Drive and Goal, which work in just the same way as they would for an ordinary character. Except, as with Wraith, the Shadow's goal is to oppose the player's character, to drag them further down into the abyss. So their archetype, drive and goal ought to be a polar opposite to the player's character.
A Jock player type might have a Brain Shadow, for example. That Brain's Goal might be to show up the Jock in front of his girlfriend, if the Jock's Goal is to rescue his girlfriend, and so on. An alternate Shadow for a Jock, assuming that his goal is to rescue his girlfriend, is to have a substitute girlfriend whose personality is the polar opposite of the Jock's actual girlfriend. So if his original girlfriend is a Good Girl, the Shadow is a Sexy Girl.
Instead of abilities, a Shadow has an Aberrance pool. That pool can only be spent to help, or frustrate, the character. Helping in this instance means adding points to a character's Pool, to help with tests or to uncover clues. Say a character wants to interrogate an NPC. The Shadow can contribute Flirting, Intimidation or Interrogation to assist, by using Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis. If an important door is locked, blocking progress, the Shadow has the key, or knows how to bypass it, on a 1 Aberrance spend. Or say an Athletics test is needed to overcome an obstacle; the Shadow can contribute points to the test.
Frustration is the same thing, in reverse. Though the Shadow can never willfully obscure clues, it can contribute pool points to increase the difficulty of a test. I suspect this will often be used to increase the difficulty of Stability tests, but not always.
This pool should be two points less than the Investigative build points used to create the character. Assuming 16 build points, then the Aberrance pool is 14, and so on. Aberrance can be refreshed whenever the character loses Stability. For each point lost, the Shadow regains Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis, up to a cap of the Shadow's original Aberrance pool.
Shadows have no General abilities. They piggyback on the characters. So in a Fleeing contest, for example, if the character successfully flees, then so does the Shadow. Shadows also have minimal Health, and no Stability. However they can never truly die. If killed in a scene, perhaps by a monster, a Shadow can reappear, apparently unharmed, a few scenes later. Ultimately as a reflection of the character that created it, a Shadow cannot die unless and until the character that created it dies.
A Shadow is never played by the person who created it. A Shadow's role should always be taken by another player, whenever possible. If that isn't possible for whatever reason, then the Shadow should be played by the Keeper.
OK, that's it for the characters. What about the town of Silent Hill?
Well, the great thing is that there are plenty of online resources that can help you create it. One of the most useful is this fan-created map of the town, but there are plenty of map examples online. That part of the map used in Silent Hill 2 is marked as South Silent Hill, but really you can pick and choose as you see fit. Print out this map. That way the players can draw on it, just as happens in the games.
What, exactly, is in Silent Hill? Ultimately that will be up to the players, but I suspect that it will depend greatly on whether or not they have played any of the Silent Hill games. Those who have will almost certainly expect to be able to go to their favorite locations. Brookhaven Hospital is a recurring setting. Heaven's Night nightclub may turn out to be a fan favorite, as might Neely's Bar. If you have the time it would be a good idea to ask, preferably at least a week or two before the session, which locations the players want to visit, and then build scenes around them.
If the Keeper's uncertain about an area, there are plenty of online resources that describe them. Alternately, make it up out of whole cloth. So long as there's plenty of atmosphere and fog, you should be fine. Even within a Silent Hill location there were always plenty of fenced-off or gated areas the player could never get to. The bit of the Hospital the characters are currently in could easily be one of those.
The creatures encountered in Silent Hill often depend on the protagonists themselves. So James Sunderland, for instance, first encountered Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head is intended as a play on his frustrated masculinity and libido, all gleaming muscle and huge weapon. Ideally, as with the locations, the Keeper should get a week or more worth of heads-up about the Worst Thing The Character Has Ever Done, which should give enough material to design the look and basic behavior of the creatures the character encounters.
It may also be useful to ask if there are particular creatures the players want to encounter, or avoid. Some long term fans of the series may feel that a particular creature type is done to death and just not interesting any more. Others may really look forward to, say, the Nurses, or Robbie the Rabbit.
However the key to monster design here is to take a hard look at the character and see what can be done. So in Silent Hill 3, for instance, where there's a strong undercurrent of sex, Heather is often attacked by creatures that resemble walking spermatozoa, or giant misshapen muscle-men, and in one section has to kill a giant purple worm that suddenly emerges from a huge hole in the wall. As I recall, I beat it to death with a stick. Paging Doctor Freud. But the point is that the enemies she faces are dependent on Heather herself, so you as Keeper need to know about the characters' goals and Worst Thing.
Try to keep it simple. Dividing it up into the Seven Deadly Sins is a handy reference that may help you in a pinch. A creature motivated by Lust is bound to be different from one motivated by Gluttony, and so on. Also remember that the Sin will affect the environment as well. Angela sees Silent Hill in a completely different way from James, because her motivating sin - linked to her goal and Worst Thing - is different from his.
Once all that's done, send the characters off into Silent Hill. Each character will probably arrive on his or her own; this isn't a moment for the Mystery Machine to rock up and start disgorging plucky teens and their crazy dog. But after they arrive each character will probably encounter the other characters one by one, just as James first meets Angela in the graveyard and leaves her there, or finds Maria in the park and brings her along with him.
You shouldn't be afraid to let the characters split up and explore the town on their own, because when not on stage a player can assume a Shadow role. If there are a lot of players this becomes tricky, so you may be better off doing this in a smaller group.
Alternately if you don't mind things getting really complicated, you can assign off-stage players recurring monster roles of one kind or another. Robbie the Rabbit returns, or one of the Nurses takes on a more human intelligence.
I'm going to leave it there for the moment, and come back to this in a Part 2. So long for now! See you in a bit.
For those who never had the pleasure, Silent Hill is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Japanese studio Konami. It's set in the one horse town that is Silent Hill, populated only by shadows and the damned. There's a map of the surrounding area, but you can't rely on it. There were other people here, some of whom are dead. The others? Well, you probably want to avoid them if you possibly can ...
People who come here seldom find what they wanted to find, and are lucky if they get out alive at all. Sometimes they stumble in, like Harry Mason, who just wanted to find his missing daughter. Some of them deliberately make their way there, like James Sunderland, who wants to track down his supposedly dead wife, or Heather Mason, who'd leave Silent Hill alone if only it would do her the same courtesy. Or you could be like Harry Townsend, who just wakes up one day and finds that he's trapped in his apartment, with no real idea why or how.
Silent Hill 2 is the best of the series. The rest? Eh, they have their moments, but none of them are as consistently frightening as James Sunderland's trip into nightmare. It's one of the most effective horror games of all time, and for good reason. No other game, and certainly none of the other Silent Hill titles, is as good at reaching into your mind and making you think; and once you do that, the shadows can get into your brain. After which, there's no chance at all.
This game partly inspired the hot mess that is the Silent Hill movie, with Sean Bean playing a Sunderland-esque role. Bean's a reasonable physical match, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it. The terrible thing is, there are times when it becomes a really good movie, only to disappoint the viewer in the very next scene.
What makes Silent Hill work? Ultimately its character. You believe in James, Harry, Heather and the rest. You understand what they want, and why they're in the situation that they're in. Those strong characters then get to bounce off the weirdness that is the town, which will explore and exploit all of their flaws, until they break.
Silent Hill the town is a very odd place, even more so than it seems at first glance; and at first glance it's pretty damn odd. It's shrouded in mist and darkness, so you can't see all of it, and it's easy to get lost. Your initial impression is that it's a one horse burg, the kind of place that hasn't many young people because they all move off to the big city as soon as they can. Maybe it had a past, but it definitely doesn't have a future.
Then you begin to explore, and to wonder. How many one horse towns have apartment buildings? A fully functioning hospital and a separate medical clinic? A prison, a Civil War museum, a Historical Society, a lakefront Hotel, a funfair, a park? Suddenly it seems much bigger than before. But where are all the people? Yes, there are abandoned cars here and there, and signs that something cataclysmic happened. But there are far fewer corpses than you'd expect if there was a natural disaster, and far fewer survivors.
One of the first living people James Sunderland meets is Angela, whose importance you only really understand when you see her for the last time, at the end. Without wishing to spoil, it becomes clear that the Silent Hill she experiences is a completely different kind of Silent Hill to the one James has had to fight through. Here's her final scene. "You see it too? For me, it's always like this."
This demonstrates two very important truths: first, that Silent Hill is different for everyone. Second, that everyone in Silent Hill gets the experience that they think they deserve.
Ultimately, this is about Hell. But this isn't about scales being balanced or some kind of judgement. This is about the punishment we make for ourselves.
Angela sees the things she sees not simply because she's being punished, but because she thinks she deserves to be punished, and in that particular way. Taking that example, James too must see the things he sees for the same reasons. Which suggests that Silent Hill, the town, bends its appearance, its essential being, to the expectations of people like James and Angela. There's a Hotel, yes, but perhaps it only exists because James needs it to exist. For Angela, there may be no Hotel. She's clearly somewhere, in that final scene, but it might not be the same somewhere that James thinks he's in.
In that case, Silent Hill is just a set, a dreamscape. For James, the Hospital is clearly designed as a insane asylum. For someone else it might be an ordinary hospital, or a school, or some other building. Two people can be in the same place, the same room, and yet have completely different experiences.
Moreover this malleability doesn't stop at the streets and buildings. As James proves in his relationship with Mary not all the people are really people. But as with the environments, these phantoms aren't created by a god or devil figure. It's people like James who invent them out of nothing at all. Ultimately all they are is a reflection of the protagonist's mental state. Nor are they there to be helpful; after all, this is about punishment, not salvation.
So taking all that on board, how can you, as Keeper, simulate Silent Hill with a ruleset such as Fear Itself?
Fear Itself has at its core the idea that ordinary people, without special abilities, magic or some kind of overarching Destiny (with that all-important capital D), can be plunged into terror beyond their imagining or control. This works nicely with Silent Hill's insistence that its protagonists be ordinary people, without powers or indeed weapons beyond the sticks and items they can scavenge. Often its scenarios are designed to be one-shots, which is perfect for a Silent Hill session. Also, in its character creation mechanic the players are encouraged to identify and describe The Worst Thing You Ever Did, which fits perfectly into the Silent Hill punishment trope.
Finally, the characters are encouraged to develop a goal, and again, this is perfect for Silent Hill, since its protagonists are usually very goal-oriented. James' goal is to find out what's going on with his supposedly dead wife, for example. Heather's is to find out what Silent Hill wants from her, and incidentally to avenge her dead father figure Harry Mason, so that's both a goal and a Drive in one easy package.
My suggestion would be that, in addition to developing a character, each player also develop something that the Wraith RPG would call a Shadow. Don't worry about Stats for these creatures; the main points are the archetype, Drive and Goal, which work in just the same way as they would for an ordinary character. Except, as with Wraith, the Shadow's goal is to oppose the player's character, to drag them further down into the abyss. So their archetype, drive and goal ought to be a polar opposite to the player's character.
A Jock player type might have a Brain Shadow, for example. That Brain's Goal might be to show up the Jock in front of his girlfriend, if the Jock's Goal is to rescue his girlfriend, and so on. An alternate Shadow for a Jock, assuming that his goal is to rescue his girlfriend, is to have a substitute girlfriend whose personality is the polar opposite of the Jock's actual girlfriend. So if his original girlfriend is a Good Girl, the Shadow is a Sexy Girl.
Instead of abilities, a Shadow has an Aberrance pool. That pool can only be spent to help, or frustrate, the character. Helping in this instance means adding points to a character's Pool, to help with tests or to uncover clues. Say a character wants to interrogate an NPC. The Shadow can contribute Flirting, Intimidation or Interrogation to assist, by using Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis. If an important door is locked, blocking progress, the Shadow has the key, or knows how to bypass it, on a 1 Aberrance spend. Or say an Athletics test is needed to overcome an obstacle; the Shadow can contribute points to the test.
Frustration is the same thing, in reverse. Though the Shadow can never willfully obscure clues, it can contribute pool points to increase the difficulty of a test. I suspect this will often be used to increase the difficulty of Stability tests, but not always.
This pool should be two points less than the Investigative build points used to create the character. Assuming 16 build points, then the Aberrance pool is 14, and so on. Aberrance can be refreshed whenever the character loses Stability. For each point lost, the Shadow regains Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis, up to a cap of the Shadow's original Aberrance pool.
Shadows have no General abilities. They piggyback on the characters. So in a Fleeing contest, for example, if the character successfully flees, then so does the Shadow. Shadows also have minimal Health, and no Stability. However they can never truly die. If killed in a scene, perhaps by a monster, a Shadow can reappear, apparently unharmed, a few scenes later. Ultimately as a reflection of the character that created it, a Shadow cannot die unless and until the character that created it dies.
A Shadow is never played by the person who created it. A Shadow's role should always be taken by another player, whenever possible. If that isn't possible for whatever reason, then the Shadow should be played by the Keeper.
OK, that's it for the characters. What about the town of Silent Hill?
Well, the great thing is that there are plenty of online resources that can help you create it. One of the most useful is this fan-created map of the town, but there are plenty of map examples online. That part of the map used in Silent Hill 2 is marked as South Silent Hill, but really you can pick and choose as you see fit. Print out this map. That way the players can draw on it, just as happens in the games.
What, exactly, is in Silent Hill? Ultimately that will be up to the players, but I suspect that it will depend greatly on whether or not they have played any of the Silent Hill games. Those who have will almost certainly expect to be able to go to their favorite locations. Brookhaven Hospital is a recurring setting. Heaven's Night nightclub may turn out to be a fan favorite, as might Neely's Bar. If you have the time it would be a good idea to ask, preferably at least a week or two before the session, which locations the players want to visit, and then build scenes around them.
If the Keeper's uncertain about an area, there are plenty of online resources that describe them. Alternately, make it up out of whole cloth. So long as there's plenty of atmosphere and fog, you should be fine. Even within a Silent Hill location there were always plenty of fenced-off or gated areas the player could never get to. The bit of the Hospital the characters are currently in could easily be one of those.
The creatures encountered in Silent Hill often depend on the protagonists themselves. So James Sunderland, for instance, first encountered Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head is intended as a play on his frustrated masculinity and libido, all gleaming muscle and huge weapon. Ideally, as with the locations, the Keeper should get a week or more worth of heads-up about the Worst Thing The Character Has Ever Done, which should give enough material to design the look and basic behavior of the creatures the character encounters.
It may also be useful to ask if there are particular creatures the players want to encounter, or avoid. Some long term fans of the series may feel that a particular creature type is done to death and just not interesting any more. Others may really look forward to, say, the Nurses, or Robbie the Rabbit.
However the key to monster design here is to take a hard look at the character and see what can be done. So in Silent Hill 3, for instance, where there's a strong undercurrent of sex, Heather is often attacked by creatures that resemble walking spermatozoa, or giant misshapen muscle-men, and in one section has to kill a giant purple worm that suddenly emerges from a huge hole in the wall. As I recall, I beat it to death with a stick. Paging Doctor Freud. But the point is that the enemies she faces are dependent on Heather herself, so you as Keeper need to know about the characters' goals and Worst Thing.
Try to keep it simple. Dividing it up into the Seven Deadly Sins is a handy reference that may help you in a pinch. A creature motivated by Lust is bound to be different from one motivated by Gluttony, and so on. Also remember that the Sin will affect the environment as well. Angela sees Silent Hill in a completely different way from James, because her motivating sin - linked to her goal and Worst Thing - is different from his.
Once all that's done, send the characters off into Silent Hill. Each character will probably arrive on his or her own; this isn't a moment for the Mystery Machine to rock up and start disgorging plucky teens and their crazy dog. But after they arrive each character will probably encounter the other characters one by one, just as James first meets Angela in the graveyard and leaves her there, or finds Maria in the park and brings her along with him.
You shouldn't be afraid to let the characters split up and explore the town on their own, because when not on stage a player can assume a Shadow role. If there are a lot of players this becomes tricky, so you may be better off doing this in a smaller group.
Alternately if you don't mind things getting really complicated, you can assign off-stage players recurring monster roles of one kind or another. Robbie the Rabbit returns, or one of the Nurses takes on a more human intelligence.
I'm going to leave it there for the moment, and come back to this in a Part 2. So long for now! See you in a bit.
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Hacking Invisible Inc (Klei)
I was going to talk about something else this week, but I've been ambushed by Klei's stealth roguelike Invisible Inc. I don't know what to think about what just happened. I'm not even sure it happened. So I'm going to write about it here in hope I'll get a better understanding by explaining it.
Bear in mind that a large chunk of this post is going to be blocked out because it contains spoilers. I'm sorry about that, but there's no other way. Also, I'm not going to go over the gameplay, since I covered all that in Not Quite Review Corner.
This relates to the DLC release Contingency Plan.
I'm playing through on Expert, and have finished the midway extra mission, where the objective is to recover a McGuffin from the field to keep AI Incognita alive. Breathe a sigh of relief, since this is way more difficult than I had anticipated, and on to the missions after that.
The story adds a further 48 hours to your search, and requires you to recover an extra piece of special loot each mission before you can escape. So I'm already on a tight deadline, and now I have something else to worry about. Oh goody!
One of the next missions I tackled was a Cybernetics Lab, Sankaku, level 4 difficulty. The team that went in was Sharp, Banks (my starting team) and Shalem 11 (rescued). I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but I mention it for what it's worth.
Spoilers incoming!
Early in the mission I discover a special computer terminal. That terminal, Mother informs me, has information that the corps looted from Invisible Inc when we were raided. There are three terminals on the level, and I need to hack and download the data from all three to complete this side mission. Not a problem, I think to myself. So Shalem starts tackling the first, and Sharp and Banks go off looking for the other two.
Bear in mind, though this is early in the mission, it's taken me a couple turns to get to this point. I'm still on alarm level 0, mind you, but the point is that time has passed. It's been maybe 3 to 8 minutes since I booted the game.
Shalem begins the hack. Sharp finds the second terminal soon afterward, and starts work on it. Then Mother tells me that, after I hack each terminal, she'll insert a worm onto Sankaku's systems.
And then the game starts singing to me.
I nigh on flipped. I don't know what it was; some generic triumphal rock, I think, with cheers and so on. At first I thought I'd somehow left YouTube on and it was playing in the background. But that made no sense; remember, it had been several minutes since I booted the game, and if it was YouTube I would have expected it to kick in much sooner.
Then I decide it's the game itself. I didn't recognize the music it was playing, and I convinced myself that this was because it was some work for hire stuff that Klei bought specially. OK, funny, heart attack over; Banks, go find the third terminal.
That's when I hear a voice stab from Valve's Team Fortress 2, the Soldier. I'm pretty sure he said Maggot! which is his favorite voice stab; it caught me completely off guard. Then the music changes to I'll Make A Man Out of You, from Disney's Mulan.
By this point I am utterly, utterly baffled. A work for hire might explain the earlier music, but persuading Disney to part with its tunes is no easy thing, and would probably cost more money than Klei has ever had. I know there's at least one YouTube short that mashes Valve's TF2 with that particular Mulan tune, and there may well be others for all I know, but this particular combination isn't one I recognize.
I'm also laughing like a hyena on crack, but that's just by the by.
Once Banks cracks the third terminal and takes the data, the music stops. Down to business! Where's the cybernetics lab? Found it. Where's the exit? Found it! Job done?
No, of course it isn't bloody done, because with all this theme tune business I've completely forgotten the special loot. It's hidden way off in a corner of the map I can't easily get to, and now I'm on alarm level 4. Sod! Sod sod monkey bollocks, run run run!
OK, now I have the special loot and am making my way back. Shalem is moving very slowly because he's carrying a very heavy weapon, so he's back near the exit. Sharp and Banks are the ones out in the field, but they're about as far away from the exit as it is possible to be.
I hit alarm level 6.
The bloody game starts playing the Beatles, Hey Jude.
Talk about take a sad song and make it better. 'Hey Jude, don't let me down'? You cheeky bastard. I'm dying over here. I've never had to play so skillfully to get my people to the exit, trying not to hack the big tank drone since it has a Validate daemon on it, which means if it goes down yet another guard will be summoned to the level and I'm up to my armpits in guards anyway ... it all gets very messy. I prefer not to kill the guards if I can help it but this time I was positively overjoyed to shoot one of the buggers.
Hey Jude follows me all the way to the exit, and my team extracts safely.
Once I'm out, I log off. That's when I discover that there really is a pop-up, a video player, and it has been playing in the background.
I don't know what to think. Was it Klei? Was it an accident? It wasn't YouTube, that much I do know, but as for the rest of it, I'm completely and utterly in the dark.
Let's say it was Klei. Well, it implies that Klei hacked my PC. Though hacked may be too strong a word, since if that is what happened, I'd bet money I gave Klei permission. Not that I'd know it. It'd be buried somewhere in the User Agreement, right next to the bit that talks about Germany's potato exports, since Klei knows full well nobody reads those things.
I don't know where it would stand legally. All it did was open a video player, which then played some music. I could do that myself if I liked. In fact, I am; as I type this I have Hey Jude playing in the background.
If it was anyone else, I'd say it didn't happen. But this is Klei. The game is about hacking computers, and one of the achievements notoriously forces you to hack the game files to get the achievement. In fact until the DLC dropped it was the one achievement I didn't have, since I lack the skills and in any case didn't really want to mess with the game.
In short, if anyone would do this, Klei would. I'd bet anything on that. I don't know how I'd prove Klei did do it, mind you. Presumably if I went poking around in the game files I'd eventually find the code that set this up, but I don't know how to do that, and in any case doing so feels a little too much like telling the magician how the rabbit was pulled out of the hat. You don't want to do that. You go to a magic show to see magic, not to be an arse about the show.
So, Klei? If this was you, hat's off. An utterly brilliant idea, and it worked perfectly.
And if it wasn't you, I don't know what the hell happened.
Postscript: I don't know what to make of this, either.
Bear in mind that a large chunk of this post is going to be blocked out because it contains spoilers. I'm sorry about that, but there's no other way. Also, I'm not going to go over the gameplay, since I covered all that in Not Quite Review Corner.
This relates to the DLC release Contingency Plan.
I'm playing through on Expert, and have finished the midway extra mission, where the objective is to recover a McGuffin from the field to keep AI Incognita alive. Breathe a sigh of relief, since this is way more difficult than I had anticipated, and on to the missions after that.
The story adds a further 48 hours to your search, and requires you to recover an extra piece of special loot each mission before you can escape. So I'm already on a tight deadline, and now I have something else to worry about. Oh goody!
One of the next missions I tackled was a Cybernetics Lab, Sankaku, level 4 difficulty. The team that went in was Sharp, Banks (my starting team) and Shalem 11 (rescued). I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but I mention it for what it's worth.
Spoilers incoming!
Early in the mission I discover a special computer terminal. That terminal, Mother informs me, has information that the corps looted from Invisible Inc when we were raided. There are three terminals on the level, and I need to hack and download the data from all three to complete this side mission. Not a problem, I think to myself. So Shalem starts tackling the first, and Sharp and Banks go off looking for the other two.
Bear in mind, though this is early in the mission, it's taken me a couple turns to get to this point. I'm still on alarm level 0, mind you, but the point is that time has passed. It's been maybe 3 to 8 minutes since I booted the game.
Shalem begins the hack. Sharp finds the second terminal soon afterward, and starts work on it. Then Mother tells me that, after I hack each terminal, she'll insert a worm onto Sankaku's systems.
And then the game starts singing to me.
I nigh on flipped. I don't know what it was; some generic triumphal rock, I think, with cheers and so on. At first I thought I'd somehow left YouTube on and it was playing in the background. But that made no sense; remember, it had been several minutes since I booted the game, and if it was YouTube I would have expected it to kick in much sooner.
Then I decide it's the game itself. I didn't recognize the music it was playing, and I convinced myself that this was because it was some work for hire stuff that Klei bought specially. OK, funny, heart attack over; Banks, go find the third terminal.
That's when I hear a voice stab from Valve's Team Fortress 2, the Soldier. I'm pretty sure he said Maggot! which is his favorite voice stab; it caught me completely off guard. Then the music changes to I'll Make A Man Out of You, from Disney's Mulan.
By this point I am utterly, utterly baffled. A work for hire might explain the earlier music, but persuading Disney to part with its tunes is no easy thing, and would probably cost more money than Klei has ever had. I know there's at least one YouTube short that mashes Valve's TF2 with that particular Mulan tune, and there may well be others for all I know, but this particular combination isn't one I recognize.
I'm also laughing like a hyena on crack, but that's just by the by.
Once Banks cracks the third terminal and takes the data, the music stops. Down to business! Where's the cybernetics lab? Found it. Where's the exit? Found it! Job done?
No, of course it isn't bloody done, because with all this theme tune business I've completely forgotten the special loot. It's hidden way off in a corner of the map I can't easily get to, and now I'm on alarm level 4. Sod! Sod sod monkey bollocks, run run run!
OK, now I have the special loot and am making my way back. Shalem is moving very slowly because he's carrying a very heavy weapon, so he's back near the exit. Sharp and Banks are the ones out in the field, but they're about as far away from the exit as it is possible to be.
I hit alarm level 6.
The bloody game starts playing the Beatles, Hey Jude.
Talk about take a sad song and make it better. 'Hey Jude, don't let me down'? You cheeky bastard. I'm dying over here. I've never had to play so skillfully to get my people to the exit, trying not to hack the big tank drone since it has a Validate daemon on it, which means if it goes down yet another guard will be summoned to the level and I'm up to my armpits in guards anyway ... it all gets very messy. I prefer not to kill the guards if I can help it but this time I was positively overjoyed to shoot one of the buggers.
Hey Jude follows me all the way to the exit, and my team extracts safely.
Once I'm out, I log off. That's when I discover that there really is a pop-up, a video player, and it has been playing in the background.
I don't know what to think. Was it Klei? Was it an accident? It wasn't YouTube, that much I do know, but as for the rest of it, I'm completely and utterly in the dark.
Let's say it was Klei. Well, it implies that Klei hacked my PC. Though hacked may be too strong a word, since if that is what happened, I'd bet money I gave Klei permission. Not that I'd know it. It'd be buried somewhere in the User Agreement, right next to the bit that talks about Germany's potato exports, since Klei knows full well nobody reads those things.
I don't know where it would stand legally. All it did was open a video player, which then played some music. I could do that myself if I liked. In fact, I am; as I type this I have Hey Jude playing in the background.
If it was anyone else, I'd say it didn't happen. But this is Klei. The game is about hacking computers, and one of the achievements notoriously forces you to hack the game files to get the achievement. In fact until the DLC dropped it was the one achievement I didn't have, since I lack the skills and in any case didn't really want to mess with the game.
In short, if anyone would do this, Klei would. I'd bet anything on that. I don't know how I'd prove Klei did do it, mind you. Presumably if I went poking around in the game files I'd eventually find the code that set this up, but I don't know how to do that, and in any case doing so feels a little too much like telling the magician how the rabbit was pulled out of the hat. You don't want to do that. You go to a magic show to see magic, not to be an arse about the show.
So, Klei? If this was you, hat's off. An utterly brilliant idea, and it worked perfectly.
And if it wasn't you, I don't know what the hell happened.
Postscript: I don't know what to make of this, either.
Sunday, 24 January 2016
Core Systems (GUMSHOE, all titles)
In any Keeper's life a little rain must fall. There will come a time when you have to introduce new players to a system unfamiliar to them. These would-be gamers may never have played tabletop before, or perhaps they have, but in a completely different system. How do you, as Keeper, ensure that these gamers have a good time, while also learning the basics of the system?
First, determine what is a core mechanic. Then ensure that this core mechanic is highlighted in the introductory game. You need to do this because, in future sessions, you're going to be spending a lot of time with that core mechanic, and you need to make sure that the players have a solid grasp of it.
Not only is this important for the obvious reasons, it's also important because you'll be introducing a lot of non-core mechanics later, and if you're going to do that successfully the players need to have a decent grasp of the basics. That way you don't spend half the session explaining things they ought already to have grasped.
So what is a core mechanic? In GUMSHOE, for instance, is clue finding a core mechanic?
I'd argue that it isn't, at least not always. Consider: in a typical GUMSHOE game, it ought to be possible to get through the entire session without picking up a single non-core clue. Of course it isn't as much fun playing that way, but if you can play without a mechanic and still successfully conclude the scenario, then I suggest that the mechanic can't be considered core.
But if clue finding isn't core, then what is? Well, that's going to depend on the system.
Take Trail of Cthulhu. There's one mechanic that the players will always use in every scenario. It's not Drives, or clue finding, though both of those things will come in handy. It's the Stability and Sanity pools. No matter what, the players will be spending from those pools in every single game. More importantly, there is a distinct difference between Stability and Sanity that goes right to the heart of the system. You can go into negative Stability, even end up with almost nothing, and by the beginning of the next scenario be just as hale and hearty as ever, psychologically speaking. But if you lose Sanity, it's not coming back.
Moreover Sanity is also linked to Pillars of Sanity, which can crumble under pressure. There are several techniques like Denial, Fainting and so on which the player can use to reduce Sanity loss. There are pools like Cthulhu Mythos that impact on Sanity. With Stability, becoming Blasted can result in mental illness, and so on. In sum, each of these pools, and their loss, has profound impact on how the game is played, on its tone, and on how the characters will progress.
The players need to understand these things. Therefore the Keeper needs to emphasize both these pools in the first adventure, and so has to ensure there are at least one or two Stability-shaking events. The Keeper also needs to ensure that the Pillars of Sanity come into it at some point, thus underlining their importance. So if a player's Pillar is the sanctity of the Catholic Church, for instance, then some kind of blasphemy against the Church in the first session is probably a good idea, since it invests that player. Also, with that player's reaction, the other players at the table begin to understand the importance of their own Pillars, and react accordingly.
None of this is to say that clue-finding isn't important to Trail. However the Keeper needs to ensure that the really important stuff gets dealt with first, and in this system Stability and Sanity are the really important mechanics. So you put them front and center, leaving the intricacies of other important mechanics for a later date.
Passing from Trail to Bookhounds of London, what's the core mechanic here? Is it Stability and Sanity again? Well, no. Both those pools are important, but neither of them are as important as the Auction and bookstore mechanics. Again, the thing to bear in mind here is how often a mechanic is used, and how it impacts on the tone of the campaign. In a Bookhounds game players will be going to auctions very regularly, perhaps even once per session. Their characters will always be concerned with what's going on at the shop, whether profits are up or down, or whether a patron's about to abandon them for another shop.
So you as Keeper need to ensure that, in the very first session, there's an auction. That the shop's future is threatened in some way by a financial calamity, which only the characters' actions can avert. Even better, that there's some kind of prize to shoot for, a rare and valuable text that they can slaver over and do their best to obtain.
So what about something completely different, like Night's Black Agents? The system is still GUMSHOE, and there's a Stability pool, though not Sanity. What's the core mechanic? Again, consider what your players will spend most of their time doing. This thing, whatever it is, must be the core mechanic. It will be the thing that creates the tone of the campaign.
It's not Stability. In fact, in all the Dracula Dossier sessions I've played so far, I haven't even asked for a Stability check. That's because when Stability-draining things happen, it's often when something else equally exiting is going on, and in the heat of the moment I let Stability slide in favor of something that keeps the badass action moment hot and messy.
In this case, the mechanics that have the strongest claim on being core are Heat and Thrilling Contests. Originally a chase scene mechanic, the Double Tap book expands Thrilling Contests to most of the General abilities, creating all kinds of possibilities. Thrilling chases on foot or in a car, thrilling surveillance contests, thrilling digital intrusion, thrilling infiltration, and so on. This is the kind of thing your agents will spend most of their time doing.
The Heat and Lead mechanics are fundamentally similar to Thrilling contests, which helps, but there's enough difference between the two that you really want to emphasize how important Heat is. So there needs to be that moment when the local authorities get involved, and the Keeper can point to the Heat the characters gained so far as the reason why.
Personally, I use red poker chips for Heat, putting them out in the middle of the table. Whenever Heat is gained, I add to the stack. That keeps everyone invested.
Two other mechanics that probably need a bit of special time are the Cover and Network pools. Again, these are pools that the characters will be referring to on a regular basis. More importantly these are also pools which don't refresh, making them very distinct from all the other General pools. Players can sometime overspend on General ability tests to ensure victory, but if they overspend here, they could be setting themselves up for disappointment later. They need to understand these mechanics, so you as Director need to ensure there's a moment in the opening scenario when these mechanics become important.
This is particularly so for players who are familiar with GUMSHOE, but not Night's Black Agents. Look at it from their point of view: every other GUMSHOE game they have ever played has taught them that General pools refresh. Some not as easily as others, but they do refresh. Sanity in Trail is the only pool that doesn't, and in that instance there is never a chance to rebuild the pool. But there is a chance to rebuild Cover and Network; it takes time and is expensive, but it can be done. A player who has become used to the typical GUMSHOE game is bound to be a little confused.
A player who isn't confused is one who's having fun. And fun is the whole point of all of this.
So, in sum: understand the core mechanic, and emphasize it in the first session. The core mechanic is the one you'll be using all the time, that sets the tone, and has a profound impact on how the game is played. Once the players understand that mechanic, everything else will follow.
That's enough for now, I think. Good luck gaming!
First, determine what is a core mechanic. Then ensure that this core mechanic is highlighted in the introductory game. You need to do this because, in future sessions, you're going to be spending a lot of time with that core mechanic, and you need to make sure that the players have a solid grasp of it.
Not only is this important for the obvious reasons, it's also important because you'll be introducing a lot of non-core mechanics later, and if you're going to do that successfully the players need to have a decent grasp of the basics. That way you don't spend half the session explaining things they ought already to have grasped.
So what is a core mechanic? In GUMSHOE, for instance, is clue finding a core mechanic?
I'd argue that it isn't, at least not always. Consider: in a typical GUMSHOE game, it ought to be possible to get through the entire session without picking up a single non-core clue. Of course it isn't as much fun playing that way, but if you can play without a mechanic and still successfully conclude the scenario, then I suggest that the mechanic can't be considered core.
But if clue finding isn't core, then what is? Well, that's going to depend on the system.
Take Trail of Cthulhu. There's one mechanic that the players will always use in every scenario. It's not Drives, or clue finding, though both of those things will come in handy. It's the Stability and Sanity pools. No matter what, the players will be spending from those pools in every single game. More importantly, there is a distinct difference between Stability and Sanity that goes right to the heart of the system. You can go into negative Stability, even end up with almost nothing, and by the beginning of the next scenario be just as hale and hearty as ever, psychologically speaking. But if you lose Sanity, it's not coming back.
Moreover Sanity is also linked to Pillars of Sanity, which can crumble under pressure. There are several techniques like Denial, Fainting and so on which the player can use to reduce Sanity loss. There are pools like Cthulhu Mythos that impact on Sanity. With Stability, becoming Blasted can result in mental illness, and so on. In sum, each of these pools, and their loss, has profound impact on how the game is played, on its tone, and on how the characters will progress.
The players need to understand these things. Therefore the Keeper needs to emphasize both these pools in the first adventure, and so has to ensure there are at least one or two Stability-shaking events. The Keeper also needs to ensure that the Pillars of Sanity come into it at some point, thus underlining their importance. So if a player's Pillar is the sanctity of the Catholic Church, for instance, then some kind of blasphemy against the Church in the first session is probably a good idea, since it invests that player. Also, with that player's reaction, the other players at the table begin to understand the importance of their own Pillars, and react accordingly.
None of this is to say that clue-finding isn't important to Trail. However the Keeper needs to ensure that the really important stuff gets dealt with first, and in this system Stability and Sanity are the really important mechanics. So you put them front and center, leaving the intricacies of other important mechanics for a later date.
Passing from Trail to Bookhounds of London, what's the core mechanic here? Is it Stability and Sanity again? Well, no. Both those pools are important, but neither of them are as important as the Auction and bookstore mechanics. Again, the thing to bear in mind here is how often a mechanic is used, and how it impacts on the tone of the campaign. In a Bookhounds game players will be going to auctions very regularly, perhaps even once per session. Their characters will always be concerned with what's going on at the shop, whether profits are up or down, or whether a patron's about to abandon them for another shop.
So you as Keeper need to ensure that, in the very first session, there's an auction. That the shop's future is threatened in some way by a financial calamity, which only the characters' actions can avert. Even better, that there's some kind of prize to shoot for, a rare and valuable text that they can slaver over and do their best to obtain.
So what about something completely different, like Night's Black Agents? The system is still GUMSHOE, and there's a Stability pool, though not Sanity. What's the core mechanic? Again, consider what your players will spend most of their time doing. This thing, whatever it is, must be the core mechanic. It will be the thing that creates the tone of the campaign.
It's not Stability. In fact, in all the Dracula Dossier sessions I've played so far, I haven't even asked for a Stability check. That's because when Stability-draining things happen, it's often when something else equally exiting is going on, and in the heat of the moment I let Stability slide in favor of something that keeps the badass action moment hot and messy.
In this case, the mechanics that have the strongest claim on being core are Heat and Thrilling Contests. Originally a chase scene mechanic, the Double Tap book expands Thrilling Contests to most of the General abilities, creating all kinds of possibilities. Thrilling chases on foot or in a car, thrilling surveillance contests, thrilling digital intrusion, thrilling infiltration, and so on. This is the kind of thing your agents will spend most of their time doing.
The Heat and Lead mechanics are fundamentally similar to Thrilling contests, which helps, but there's enough difference between the two that you really want to emphasize how important Heat is. So there needs to be that moment when the local authorities get involved, and the Keeper can point to the Heat the characters gained so far as the reason why.
Personally, I use red poker chips for Heat, putting them out in the middle of the table. Whenever Heat is gained, I add to the stack. That keeps everyone invested.
Two other mechanics that probably need a bit of special time are the Cover and Network pools. Again, these are pools that the characters will be referring to on a regular basis. More importantly these are also pools which don't refresh, making them very distinct from all the other General pools. Players can sometime overspend on General ability tests to ensure victory, but if they overspend here, they could be setting themselves up for disappointment later. They need to understand these mechanics, so you as Director need to ensure there's a moment in the opening scenario when these mechanics become important.
This is particularly so for players who are familiar with GUMSHOE, but not Night's Black Agents. Look at it from their point of view: every other GUMSHOE game they have ever played has taught them that General pools refresh. Some not as easily as others, but they do refresh. Sanity in Trail is the only pool that doesn't, and in that instance there is never a chance to rebuild the pool. But there is a chance to rebuild Cover and Network; it takes time and is expensive, but it can be done. A player who has become used to the typical GUMSHOE game is bound to be a little confused.
A player who isn't confused is one who's having fun. And fun is the whole point of all of this.
So, in sum: understand the core mechanic, and emphasize it in the first session. The core mechanic is the one you'll be using all the time, that sets the tone, and has a profound impact on how the game is played. Once the players understand that mechanic, everything else will follow.
That's enough for now, I think. Good luck gaming!
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