(S)entries & the Dracula Dossier (Night's Black Agents)

I've been asked to talk about how I would use (S)entries, the Harker Intrusion and the Van Helsing Letter as an introduction to the glittering treasure box that is the Dracula Dossier. This week I'll be discussing (S)entries, the opening scenario published in the main rulebook. 

For those of you who don't want any spoilers whatsoever, stop reading now. I'm going to be as spoiler-light as I can, but any discussion must inevitably drift into spoiler territory.

The opening scenario of any game needs to do two things: demonstrate the core concept, and show off the game world. The core concept is the crunchy rules bit of the campaign. How do you do combat? How do you resolve tests, uncover clues, uncover the twisty turns of the plot and win the day? Is this grim and gritty, high stakes stuff? Le Carre, Bond or Bourne? Who are these characters and what is their relationship with the setting?

(S)entries is very good at this. By the time the agents have completed their task they will have had to engage with most of the core mechanics of the game. They will also have encountered an unusual adversary. Odds are one or more of them will be injured, but unless things have gone badly wrong nobody will have died. However there is the potential for things to go badly wrong. This isn't a cakewalk. Incautious agents will get reamed. 

They will also have encountered a  McGuffin, and may still be in possession of same by the end of the scenario. 

Yes I know, you've seen that one before. It bears repeating. Particularly if you're new to this, you need to know just how disposable McGuffins are. That means if the players drop the McGuffin there is always another McGuffin round the corner. If, at the end of (S)entires, the agents no longer have the McGuffin that shouldn't bring the plot to a premature conclusion.

In the Dracula Dossier, the McGuffin is the Dossier itself. A copy of Stoker's Dracula that theoretically contains vital information which, if used correctly, can stop Dracula in his tracks. Or not. Several generations of spies have used it, and come up short. It is protected by the strongest and most lethal defenses Edom has to offer. Or it's been hiding in a box for however long. Or someone stole it. Or someone lost it. 

'Someone lost it' is more common than you might think, in spy circles. Magician John Mulholland's Manual of Trickery, written to help the CIA, went missing for decades after MKUltra went blooey. It finally turned up in someone's desk drawer in the early 2000s. Peter Wright in Spycatcher mentions in passing clearing out his office safe, full of all kinds of oddments he'd squirrelled away over a lifetime of espionage. Files get taken out of archive and not put back. Things get taken out of the office even when every available protocol says they shouldn't leave the archivist's store. It's said it's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission - some people seem to spend their entire careers asking for forgiveness.

In this instance I would play it that the McGuffin found in (S)entries is a much smaller version of the Dossier. A few pages at most, obtained at great expense and effort. When I did this in my game I had the scanned pages on the hard drive of the laptop that the agents have to snatch, and played it that the NPC the laptop belongs to was negotiating with the Dossier's holder for full access. The scanned pages were to establish the holder's bona fides.

The physical book is part of the Dracula Dossier set. However there's nothing to say that you, as Director, can't buy a copy of Dracula and use it in your game. In fact if you're feeling particularly crafty you can get a completely unrelated book and switch out the cover for the first edition. People assume that first editions must be spectacular, high-end items with lavish production values. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Theoretically the actual first edition ought to be a fairly battered artefact. Even if its owner kept it as pristine as possible, when first released Dracula wasn't what you'd call highbrow literature. Nobody was releasing high-end limited editions. This is practically Mills and Boon mass-produced commercial tat. Yellow cloth cover with red lettering, and eight pages of publisher's advertisements at the end. The 1927 Doubleday edition is prettier. The 1931 dustjacket is more evocative. The annotated version is more informative. None of that matters. People don't buy first editions to read them. First editions are all about bragging rights. 

In short: make your own Dossier. A little bit of Photoshop, and you're golden. Whatever it is, it's just as viable as any other version of the McGuffin. It can lose pages. It can be valuable, or at least desirable to a collector. Buy a cheap one second-hand and let the players keep it. Splatter it with blood or write on the pages with glow-in-the-dark ink. Treat it as disposable, because it very much is. 

For reference, this is the back cover of an Agatha Christie White Circle Pocket paperback circa 1930-something. The inside cover has an advert for something called Pelmanism. The back page just says I WANT CADBURYS. This is the very definition of cheap disposable tat. I picked this up when I was last in London for three quid and a bit, as the condition isn't collector's standard. Haunt your second-hand shop and you too can come away with gold. 

If I were using (S)entries as an introduction to the Dossier I wouldn't touch the scenario at all. I would leave it exactly as it is, but I would make sure that the McGuffin in the scenario either includes information that leads to the Dossier, or information about whoever has the Dossier. 

I would also make this the very first scenario of the series. In part because it does everything you want a first scenario to do, and also because there's a decent chance the characters will end up with the McGuffin at the end which in turn can include information that leads to other scenarios.

The Director-controlled character who possesses the McGuffin at the start of the scenario is fairly undefined. He has a name and a plot function, but there's nothing in the scenario to indicate why he's interested in the McGuffin. He may not even realize the importance of what he has. The only change I would make to the scenario is to tie that character more firmly to the ongoing plot as a whole. There are several ways to do this:

• The NPC is an agent working for X (Edom? The Conspiracy? Someone else?). In the course of the scenario the characters find out a little about X, and X's ongoing plot function.
• The NPC is a Legacy.
• The NPC is part of an independent group dedicated to finding the Dossier.
• The NPC is a Stoker enthusiast whose search for a first edition has uncovered some very odd facts.

In each of these instances it may or may not be useful if the NPC is a recurring character. Alternatively the NPC's mysterious disappearance or death shortly after the events of the scenario gives the characters the first indication of the seriousness of their long-term situation.

There is one other optional change the Director could make: change the location of the NATO base. 

The opening scenes take place in Bosnia, where the agents have to infiltrate a NATO base. However if you're playing the Dracula Dossier then some of the action - possibly a lot of it - will be taking place in Romania. As Director you're going to want to introduce the agents to the setting as early as possible. As luck would have it, there's a perfectly serviceable NATO base in Deveselu, Romania. It used to be a Romanian Air Force Base before it was shut down in 2003. Technically you may want to play with dates a little bit as NATO doesn't move in until 2016, and the usual modern day start date is 2014. That said, there's no law that says your game has to start in 2014, and if you wanted to move the occupation date for Deveselu forward a couple years nobody's going to cry foul. Plus an air base that's been mothballed for more than ten years in a relatively rural part of Romania sounds like the perfect setting for supernatural shenanegans.  

Understand, I'm not saying put Dracula's Castle in sunny downtown Deveselu. I'm saying lay a little groundwork for what's to come. Perhaps Edom's cup insignia on some old monument, or a fleeting glimpse of a Node like Heal the Children. If a Director-controlled character like the Psychic is going to be important later, have the Psychic appear on local television. Just drop hints, with perhaps a bit of folklore attached, so when the agents come back to Romania later it can be more along the lines of 'I remember this from last time - and it was just as creepy then, too.'

In a previous post, Messing with the Protagonists, I give an example of what can be done with the McGuffin itself. I let the players obtain information, but it came with a sting in the tail: viruses, which infected their own hardware. As Director you should consider doing something similar with your McGuffin. After all, once the players have it everyone else wants it, and that means the players will constantly need to defend their prize. The whole point behind a McGuffin is that everyone wants it. If the characters aren't threatened 24/7 as long as they have it, why, it's not a McGuffin.  

Anyway, that should give you enough to be going on with. Next time, a discussion of another scenario that can be used as a lead-in to the Dossier.

Enjoy!

Ten Horror Films You Must See

I just watched one of those top ten videos. You know the kind; you've probably seen far too many of them. I know I have. It got me thinking. I don't really have a top ten and I don't want one. There are far too many films out there for me to winnow down a list to just ten. Still, in these happy-go-lucky times when watching film is a solid go-to for folks who have to stay indoors, which ten horror films would I recommend to any horror fan?

Vampyr, 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer. Semi-silent.

The silent film era birthed some of horror's finest talents. Directors and writers were finding their feet in a new medium, and an entirely new craft was invented: cameraman. Sometimes the results were less than satisfactory, but that didn't matter because you could put together a solid film with next to nothing in the bank. Many did.

One of the silent era's significant advantages was any film could be shown anywhere. Without language getting in the way, the audience could concentrate on what was happening on-screen. Sound broke that market, ushering in a new era where films had to stay in their home market to find any kind of success at all.

Dreyer, a Dane, was an orphan and had an unhappy childhood. He first worked as a journalist but switched to writing title cards for film, eventually graduating to film direction. Vampyr was very nearly his last feature, as it was a commercial failure and he was unable to find work for almost a decade afterward.

Vampyr is just at the cusp of silent and sound. Perhaps because of this Dreyer intentionally included as little dialogue as possible. Basing his plot on two Sheridan Le Fanu chillers, Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant which features live burial, he cobbled together a serviceable plot about a young traveler who finds himself caught in a spectral drama. The plot's good but not great; what makes this film sing is its dreamlike imagery. The dancing shadows, the burial in the glass-fronted coffin, the corn mill - those stick with you years after watching Vampyr.

Cat People, 1942, Jacques Tourneur.

Produced by Val Lewton for RKO's low budget horror studio, this gives the horror world one unique artefact which I know you're familiar with: the jump scare. Or, as it's known then, the Lewton Bus, as the first known example involves a bus.

Young Serb immigrant to the US Irena Dubrovna fears the dark, because she thinks she knows what lives in the dark. The people she comes from tell stories about witches who can turn into savage beasts, a gift given them by Satan. Though good King John punished them for their many bloody crimes, a few survived and thrived in unhappy places up in the mountains. Irena's terrified their wickedness lives in her, and is careful never to become too exited, too passionate, in case their curse overwhelms her. Even so her American friend Oliver persuades her to marry him, only to bring doom on them both. She refuses to make love, terrified that passion will awake the beast. So he, in his misery and frustration, turns to his friend and work colleague Alice for a shoulder to cry on. Jealousy provokes Irena, and before long her passions get the better of her.

This, and Lewton's other films, show what can be done with imaginative camera work, clever editing, and above all a good story. If for no other reason than to see the very first jump scare, you should see this film.

Night of the Living Dead, 1968, George Romero.

Romero and his buddies, most of whom worked making cheapo commercials, became frustrated watching fourth and fifth rate horror flicks. Anyone could do better. Hell, they could do better. All they needed was a bunch of young people, plenty of blood and guts, and some nudity. That was what the kids in the drive-in wanted to see.

So that's what they set out to do, on a next-to-nothing budget. Movie legend says it was $12,000, though it ended up being more than that. About $60-70K in cash, plus extra in credit and equipment, or a little over $100K total. The main camera was second-hand, and the costumes came from Goodwill. The house was borrowed and due to be demolished, so they could do whatever they liked. For actors, they turned to friends and neighbors. Those friends and neighbors soon became investors - after all, the film's cash had to come from somewhere. Every single person you see on screen, zombies or otherwise, had at least a couple bucks invested. It was a hectic shoot, and nobody had only one job. You weren't just the woman who did make-up, you were the ghoul who ate the live bug and worked on sound too. They were young, inexperienced and ready for anything - and it shows.

John Russo, one of Romero's partners, is the zombie you see set on fire about halfway through the film as well as another zombie seen stabbed through the head by hero Ben. The fire story is one of my favorite bits of film trivia. Like pretty much every other special effects sequence the production team had very little idea how to do it. These days the sequence would be carefully plotted out for maximum safety. In Night of the Living Dead, they dressed Russo in several layers of baggy clothing and threw a Molotov cocktail near him. "I was trying to hit a stone out there," recalls Hardman. "Sometimes I hit it, and sometimes …I just can't believe, to this day, that I thought I could hit a stone that was really, what, twenty-four inches across, from the second floor window, over the porch roof." Some strategically pooled gasoline and a match would then set Russo on fire. It was Russo's plan. He felt it was unreasonable, as written, for Harry to throw all those Molotovs and not set a single zombie ablaze.

The idea was Russo'd catch fire and run off-shot, where he'd be extinguished. "I just went until I felt my hair burning." The look on people's faces as he ran past them, "this worried look mixed with glee," he remembered later, stuck with him the rest of his life.

Night of the Living Dead is my go-to example of how budget doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter, when making a movie. The only thing that counts is a willingness to get out there and shoot the film, no matter what.

Onibaba 1964, Kaneto Shindo. 

Japan is wracked by civil war, and the country is falling apart. Two women, a mother and daughter-in-law whose husband has gone off to war, fend off starvation by killing straggler soldiers and selling their equipment to a middleman. Then one of their neighbors returns from the battlefield with stories to tell, and he settles in nearby. The son isn't coming home, he says. He was executed for stealing food.

The lonely young widow sneaks out to see the young man every chance she gets, much to the displeasure of her mother-in-law who blames him for her son's death. She concocts a plan: with the help of a hideous mask she stole from a samurai's corpse, she pretends to be a demon spirit to keep the daughter-in-law at home through fear.

Thus begins the reign of Onibaba: the Hag Woman.

This is how you do a lot with a little. There's practically no set. Everything takes place out in the rushes next to a river, and in two rough huts. The only complicated bit was the hole in which the women disposed of the corpses, and into which the mother-in-law has to crawl in order to steal the mask from the samurai's body. It was impossible to dig any kind of hole where they were, as it immediately filled in with water. So they built a 'hole' above ground in a kind of tower supported by scaffolding, in order to get the shot.

Yet those night sequences, particularly once Onibaba shows her masked face, will stick with you forever. I don't want to spoil, but I will say that the ending sequence in particular … brrrr. Chills.

Dead of Night 1945, various directors. Black and white.

An architect, Walter Craig, is asked to visit a house in the country to advise on alterations. When he gets there he discovers he's seen the place before, in a recurring nightmare. What's more all the people in the house are the people in his dream, except he can't remember exactly how it ends. He knows it ends badly ...

This is an anthology movie, one of the earliest - possibly the first. Each person in the house tries to reassure Craig by telling him their own stories: the young kid with a bad experience at a house party, the racing driver who had a nasty dream after a car crash, the young bride who got a very dangerous wedding present, the psychiatrist who once had a patient whose delusions might not have been delusions. Each story is a short sequence, perhaps ten minutes long. Some of the stories are almost pleasant. You may recognize one or two, as they're based on famous short fiction.

Then comes the end, when Walter Craig finds out what happens after the lights go out.

I couldn't find a version of the trailer that didn't give away significant plot points so if you want to see this unspoilt, don't search YouTube.

This is an Ealing Studio movie, and while Ealing is best known for its comedies it could produce serious dramas when it wanted to. This is a rare example of Ealing's chiller side, and it works very well. It's hokey and creaky at the start, and then it begins to tighten the screws. By the final moments like Walter Craig the audience is hopelessly ensnared. What happens when the lights go out? What happens when the lights go out?

R-Point, 2004, Kong Su-Chang.

In 1972 South Korean High Command in Vietnam is worried about a series of radio messages received from a platoon that High Command thinks is long dead. They say they're lost at Romeo-Point and beg for extraction. Is this some sort of hoax? An enemy broadcast? Can anyone really be alive out there?

Heroic Lieutenant Choi and a group of cooks and ne'er-do-wells is sent to find out. It's a kind of Lost Patrol of the malingering and useless. Nobody expects them to find anything, and God forbid actual effort's expended to find soldiers lost out in the jungle. Except they do find those missing soldiers, and much more besides, out at the old colonial plantation house at the heart of R-Point.

It's got all the war movie goodness you'd expect and in many ways it's not much more than solid B-class filmmaking. But. But. It does the right thing. It lets the atmosphere carry the film, not the special effects or gung-ho guns blasting heroics. That means the creeps start in your mind, and once your mind is caught everything else follows.

Apologies for the non-subtitled trailer, but while there are subtitled trailers none of them are HD, so I went for pretty over convenient.

Ju-On 2002, Takashi Shimizu.

OK, either this or the Ring was going to be on the list. I went for the Grudge because of the two it was the first one I saw, and stuck with me the longest. It's loosely based on a short by Lafcadio Hearn, who you may remember me mentioning before.

This is actually the third in the series, but the first to see a theatrical release. The shot above is one of the earliest in the film, where social worker Rika Nishina goes to a house to check on an invalid. The invalid's an elderly woman who's supposed to be in her son's care. Rika discovers the old woman abandoned, the son nowhere to be seen. But the house isn't empty ...

The core concept is that, in folklore, a person who dies while consumed in a fit of rage comes back as an angry ghost. In the original story that spirit is obsessed with completing a task, and will never stop until the task is complete. In Ju-On the ghosts just come back angry, not obsessed - but whoever they encounter is infected by their curse, and whoever those people encounter also become infected. It operates on zombie movie mechanics, where first bit spreads the contagion until everyone's bit.

Kudos to Rika for carrying on, by the way. Was it me, no amount of dedication to the job would have had me set foot in that house.

Atmosphere does a lot of the work here. It helps that this is very much a house-next-door story. Many spooky house dramas take place in cobwebbed mansions. This is a perfectly ordinary suburban house. What could possibly happen there?

Well ...

Seoul Station 2017, Yeon Sang-Ho.

A precursor to the better-known Train to Busan, this zombie story focuses on events the night before Busan. Things are just starting to kick off, and one man's tragedy soon turns into citywide chaos and devestation.

OK, so far so zombie but what makes this work is not the animation nor the gore - though there's plenty of gore. It works because Yeon Sang-Ho has the sense to focus on three characters: a runaway daughter turned prostitute, her wannabe-pimp boyfriend, and her raging father. Those three carry the film. It's never just about zombies. The boyfriend and father comb a city on the verge of collapse trying to save the daughter, and it's their struggle above all else that really makes this work.

In that sense it's a spiritual successor to Night of the Living Dead, which also had the sense to focus on the characters and not the action surrounding the characters. Sure there was plenty of gore in Night - those zombies were chomping down on actual guts sourced from a slaughterhouse, after all. That wasn't what the audience was interested in. The audience desperately wants to know who will live and who will die, and that's because the audience quickly becomes invested in the characters.

The same is true in Seoul Station. Right up to those last few terrifying minutes, you want to know what will happen next to those three lost souls.

Hardware, 1990, Richard Stanley.

I was in two minds whether to put this or Stanley's Dust Devil on the list. They're both excellent, atmospheric films but I've seen Hardware more often and keep wanting to see Hardware more often, so I suppose this is the better pick.

If you know Stanley it's probably because of his recent Lovecraftian release, The Color Out of Space. This is Stanley at the start of his career. Up till now he's been shooting music videos for the likes of Field of the Nephilim. He's just this minute come back from Afghanistan, where he shot a documentary about the Soviet-Afghan War and the USSR's withdrawal from that bloody conflict. He goes from the battlefield straight into Hardware, and you can see the influence it had on his story. Chunks of the shoot feel like goth rock tracks too.

Yet where this works is in the visuals. Like R-Point there's a lot of solid B-picture filmmaking on display, and the SFX are about as ropey as you'd expect from a cheapo Miramax product of the '90s. Like Night of the Living Dead Stanley opts for violence, blood and nudity as those sell. However the visuals are what really makes it sing, just as they do for Vampyr.

For a very long time controversy prevented this getting a DVD release, but it finally became available in 2009. It can be difficult to find, but if you do get a copy, settle in for a midnight showing with a six-pack to hand. You won't regret it.

That's it from me! Next week, something completely different.

XCOM: Chimera Squad (Not Quite Review Corner)

This is a fun one!

In the world of XCOM, an alien invasion in 2016 subjugated Earth under the rule of the Elders and their many unusual minions. However the secretive military counter-insurgency XCOM rallied, the Elders were defeated, and now everyone gets to live happily ever after.

Sorta.

The problem is there are millions of non-humans, human hybrids, clones and other remnants of the bad old days kicking around. Mass slaughter is off the table. Everyone has to learn to live together and forget the past. In the riot-torn starport of City 31, precise geographic location unspecified, that means someone has to keep the peace.

That someone is Chimera Squad. That someone is you.

Chimera Squad is a group of hero-level characters, some human, others not. They all have their unique abilities, personalities, and quirks. Axiom the Muton likes to eat what he catches, and loses his temper very easily. Blueblood the ex-cop has personal ties to City 31. Torque the Viper just wants a chance to tear loose and chew on Canadian bacon. None of it is in-depth; you learn about as much about these characters as you do the bulls of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct or any police procedural.

The characterization's strong, voice acting's good and the game isn't so hung up on its cinematics as to require full motion capture of every least facial twitch. There are radio bits and other snippets to keep you engaged with the city, and while City 31 doesn't have the same gravitas a city of its size in the real world would, it does feel solid and engaging.

Chimera Squad's special ops cops face off against former soldiers of the occupation, weapons smugglers and psychic psychotics, trying to keep a lid on the city's roiling pot of trouble. If things get too hot, the city will collapse and your mission will end.

Mechanically this is the same small scale squad tactical game you enjoyed when it was called XCOM 2. The maps aren't as huge, but you face the same strategic challenges: hide here, go there, run to higher ground for a better shot? Flank, and risk being flanked? Play it safe but miss out on an opportunity? These are the questions you'll have to answer on the battlefield, but be warned: the enemy's intelligent and very dangerous. Get it wrong, and you're cooked.

The big difference is in this game there is no permadeath. If a cop falls, they have to be rescued before they Bleed Out. Otherwise the game ends there; Chimera Squad can't afford to lose a single operative.

At least, that's the obvious big difference. Having played, I now know that the bigger difference by far is how the game treats its special use items.

In previous iterations when you gave your troopers a grenade, a medkit or a similar one-shot item, you knew that to use that item you needed to spend one of your trooper's action points. Each trooper only had two, so it became part of the game's economy. The opportunity cost of using an item meant you didn't have that action point to shoot or move.

That's gone. Using an item costs nothing. It's grenade Christmas, and you are Santa Boom-Boom. Spray medkits everywhere, charge up your troopers with whatever hot alien tech you bought at the Scavenger's Market. You can still move and shoot after flinging your kit around like a frenzied monkey. Throw a bubble grenade to tie down the trooper who otherwise would flank you, move up, and beat his buddy senseless with the butt of your shotgun.

That's the other big battlefield change: you can bring them in alive. I started using the Subdue maneuver early on because it suited my concept of how cops should behave: take them alive whenever possible. Sure, you get Intelligence rewards from the interrogation, but that wasn't why I did it. I figure, I'm playing a cop. Cops arrest people.

Then I noticed something. Subdue never fails. If you can get to the target you have a 100% chance to hit, which in RNG-happy XCOM is the Golden Snitch. Subdue doesn't use ammunition. Subdue can do as much as 5 points of damage under the right circumstances. Some characters like Cherub and Zephyr can do much more than that. Zephyr can crush multiple targets in one action, and Cherub can hit several targets with his shield bash wave. So given the option between taking a shot that might miss and uses ammunition, or Subdue, which never fails and costs nothing, I often pick Subdue. Perps vanish under a wall of beefy cop flesh, while off in the back Torque reads the Miranda warning - or whatever passes for Miranda in City 31.

Which is the game in a nutshell. Chimera Squad seems simple enough, but there's a lot going on under the hood. It allows you to play several different ways, but understanding all the systems feels like juggling frogs. I lost my first Ironman game to Anarchy after creaming the first two opposing factions, because I didn't understand all the ways I could crush Anarchy and keep the city moving. I didn't put Verge first in the Breach because I didn't understand how his Levitation ability helps me. I didn't appreciate Scars until I noticed my guys missing shots and moving slowly because they were covered in Scars.

You'll find yourself falling in love with one character, like Terminal, swearing you can't go out without her. Then you'll see how Zephyr's martial arts are game-winners, or how Cherub's shield block can save a tricky breach. There's enough variety in your heroes that you will want to see how they all perform, and find new ways to use their abilities. There's no reason to pick one squad and stick with that one squad forever and ever Amen.

As a game it's remarkably forgiving, technically as well as mechanically. My NUC's processor is underpowered for this and occasionally smells bunt toast, immediately crashing out. It often coincides with a lot of on-screen activity, like enemy reinforcements arriving on-scene. This is infrequent; it happens maybe once in a four hour session, and sometimes doesn't happen at all. Given my machine's not up to the game's spec, I'm pleased I get this level of functionality. There are one or two graphical glitches, but nothing to write home about. Frankly, I've seen top-end AAA titles with worse graphical issues.

So of course I'm recommending it, particularly in these times of wonder where staying in all day is the new normal. If you're not already mainlining Animal Crossing because you like noodling around with raccoon bankers, then now's the time to save the city with your band of misfit 5-0.

Enjoy!

Zalozhniy Quartet & Vampire Design (Night's Black Agents)

Recently I was asked how I would make (S)entries, the Harker Intrusion, the Van Helsing Letter and the Zalozhniy Quartet into a campaign that in turn led into the Dracula Dossier. That would involve delving into the guts of several scenarios any one of which could spoil things for the players out there, so I shan't be doing precisely that. However I did think it would be useful to discuss each of those elements individually and talk about how I'd stage them. I'm going to start with the Zalozhniy Quartet, and discuss vampire design.

If you don't want even the least hint of a spoiler for that campaign, stop reading now.

As a Director when you purchase gaming supplements you know you will have to make some adjustments. They might be small or large. You might be looking for something strictly off-the-shelf, with as few user tweaks as possible. You might be the sort who enjoys playing with someone else's toys and bending them to your desired configuration, like a miniatures enthusiast who can't bear to put the paints away until it looks exactly as you imagined. Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum some adjustment is inevitable to make the game fit on your table. No published supplement ever written is so perfect as to work for every possible group configuration every time. That means you need to understand vampire design. Or, in a different setting like Dungeons and Dragons or Mutant City Blues, adversary design.

Vampire design is absolutely key to any discussion about Night's Black Agents, and not for the obvious reason. Design is critical because it affects the overall aesthetic of the game, and that aesthetic has to bleed through into every scenario you play. Tone has to be consistent. That means you have to decide pretty much from the outset what your vampires are, because that will determine how they affect tone and therefore plot.

What's at ZQ's core? What are these vampires about?

In ZQ, without going into major spoilers, time is the core concept. Therefore as Director time is what you're going to be playing with. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about Satanic, Mutant, Alien or Supernatural entities. The key factor is time. These creatures play with time; they exist in between the ticking of the clock.

So every scenario, every moment within the game ought to be reinforcing this core concept. Think of it like a murder mystery. If Poirot is investigating a killing at the vicarage, he is always investigating that murder. There is never a point in the story when he is not investigating that murder. The narrative behaves as though he is obsessed with murder from the discovery of the body to the denouement. Eating breakfast? Going to the shops? Watching a film, reading a book? Never; it's all murder, all the time.

For you in ZQ, it's time all the time. As Director you need to emphasize this. It doesn't need to be some massive time-blorp. It can be something as simple as 'you're running late. 'She's always early, this isn't like her.' 'Gosh, is that the time? It's later than you think.' 'That clock's running slow.' You could begin every session by saying something like 'it's 8.36 am on Monday the 3rd,' and end each session with 'it's 11.58 pm on Weds the 5th.' That steady drip of time reinforces the tone, and puts the players in the mood for those moments when you really fork them with the naughty spoon.

I reference the Doctor Who episode Blink above because it's funny, but also because it reinforces the dilemma. Here's a brilliant example of a writer playing with the idea of time, using the simplest technology available: someone's video recording in 1969, played back in the present day. If your vampire plays with time then every chance you get you go wibbley-wobbley, just as freaky as you can.

Stephen King's The Langoliers does this very well - the miniseries not so much, but you can't have everything.

King doesn't start screaming from page 1 'time! Time, you bastards! Tiiiiiimmmmeee!' However much he may have been tempted. No, he starts with a dilemma: most of the people on board the plane have vanished, leaving only a few random artifacts behind. King progresses: why does the air feel different? The food stale? The matches somehow less inflammable? Why is the world so used-up? Then, and only then, when the situation has been established and the stakes clear, do the Langoliers appear on-stage in all their glory.

So in ZQ, what does this mean?

It means you can play with the scenery, that's what. It means 2014, 1970, 1940 and 1893 all occupy the same space at the same moment. It means Robespierre is giving a speech to the Commune, being executed, being born and is long dead all at once. It means it is always teatime.

'What a funny watch!' Alice remarked. 'It tells the month and not the time of day!'

Look around you. Right now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Chances are the room you currently occupy - the physical building - predates you. Perhaps by decades, perhaps by centuries. Even if it was built in your lifetime unless it is very, very new it has had an existence in space and time that is independent of your own. There was a point when the wall wasn't there, it was over there. Or perhaps that door didn't exist before. The paint changed, the wallpaper was stripped away or applied.

Moreover it will probably outlast you. For years. Perhaps centuries.

Imagine if you could see all those moments at once. How permanent would the world feel to you then, when even the chair you sit in doesdoesnotdoesdoesnot like a cat in a box?

Now you've had that existential crisis, let's discuss the other issue you're likely to have with a published campaign. You need to be able to identify the parts that will not work for you, and to cut them. Don't be tempted to make it work. You'll only hurt yourself and your game. Just be able to see the problem for what it is, and get rid of it. If your heart isn't in it, the players will sense that. They're tricksy beggars. This can only damage the atmosphere, and thus the game.

Remember, the whole point is to provide an experience at the table which everyone enjoys. It's not to play the scenario exactly as written. Nobody ever does that. The Director might skip a scene, the players might not engage with the plot in exactly the way the writer intends. That's perfectly fine. The idea is to have fun. So long as you're doing that, everything else is optional.

Since this bit does involve spoilers, in ZQ:

Each zalozhniy has a mortal wound that would have killed them if it were not for supernatural intervention. If they suffer this wound a second time, they are killed outright. For example, a zalozhniy who is “supposed” to die from a stab wound is destroyed if stabbed in the right place; a zalozhniy who was originally destined to die in a burning house can only be destroyed by incineration. Discovering a zalozhniy’s true death requires investigation, but if the agents can deliver the right type of attack (often with a Called Shot), the creature is instantly destroyed

When I first read that, I thought it was brilliant. Creepy. Totally in keeping with the aesthetic. Then I gave it some thought, and asked myself how I was going to communicate that bit of lore to the players. Then I asked myself how the players were supposed to use this information. 

GUMSHOE is ultimately about piecing together clues to unravel plot and resolve story. Say this is a murder mystery: in the room with the cooling corpse there is always something that indicates the identity of the killer. It might be blood spatter and forensics, or a written note clutched in the corpse's hand. There's always something. That means as Director you need to be able to look at any given situation and, without effort, think of a couple of clues that lead to information. The players then use this information to resolve the scenario's dilemma. You never want to hide information, or present information that the players cannot use. Note I say cannot. If the players do not use information, that's their own problem.

Problem: What about someone whose chosen death no longer exists in the modern world? If someone was supposed to be trampled to death by European bison, will cows do? If so, how do you manage that without playing the Benny Hill soundtrack in the background?

Problem: What about a heart condition? Drowning? Electric shock? Extreme allergic reaction? There's a lot of ways to die. What counts as dying before your time? Hell, what's 'your time'? Is it just old age or is there something more to it?

Problem: How do you investigate someone's true death? It's not as if you can pull an autopsy report off the official file. There can be no autopsy; there was never a body to cut up.  If you know that Mack the spec ops veteran was last seen when an IED took out his vehicle, fine. Except that doesn't tell you whether he died of explosive damage or heart failure or something else altogether. You'd have to get close enough to the target for Medicine or Notice to work, and if you're that close then the vampire probably has its fangs in you already.

So I began to wonder whether or not this mechanic was worth keeping. It's cool and I like the idea, but I'm already finding ways to bork it. If I can do that then the players will definitely do the same. Or, worse, they'll never find out about this mechanic and so never use it.

I'm not saying the idea's unworkable. I'm saying I can't make it work for me. So I can either tinker with it until it does work - which, as I mention above, is a really bad idea - or I can cut it. If I cut it I have to replace it with something that does the same job, but which I can make better use of.

So what does this mechanic do? Is it vital? Is there another way to get the same result?

It provides an instakill mechanic. Vampires can be killed by other means, so it's not vital. I can think of other ways to get the same result.


My fix: every vampire has a time they're supposed to die, but didn't. If Mack the spec ops veteran was supposed to bleed out at 1.45 pm and 43 seconds, then that's when he's most vulnerable. If someone delivers a killing blow at that split second (called shot), the vampire dies outright. The vampires know the moment of their own death and are incredibly paranoid about it, making sure they're in a safe place at the appropriate time. At that very split second each day the distortion field expands in the same way it does when a zalozhniy feeds. So if the players pay attention to those moments when the vampire seeks a safe place and their distortion field blorps, they can work out the best moment to attack. 

Enjoy! Next week, something different.

Ghost Plane Recovery (Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself)

This week's installment is inspired by Mark Felton Productions, and the story of the spy plane Kee Bird.

For those who don't want the full story, the short version of Kee Bird goes thusly: in 1947 a B-29 Superfortress spy plane flying a photoreconnaissance operation over the Arctic came down in the snow-packed tundra close to Thule, Greenland. The crew survived and were rescued along with all their camera equipment and film. The plane was left where it lay until 1994, when a privately funded rescue attempt almost succeeded in repairing the aircraft and flying it to Thule for a complete restoration. Unfortunately the fuel line ruptured, a fire broke out and the fuselage burnt beyond salvage. What little is left of Kee Bird still sits out there, all but a memory.

The Arctic has been a popular destination for surveillance aircraft since the early days of the Cold War. Even today aerial espionage is an ongoing pursuit as the Russian border is close to Alaska, and then there's the invaluable natural resources to be had. Oil is everyone's concern. That's one of the reasons why the Arctic is littered with old spy craft, and both sides have lost planes and people (warning: footage, Tu-22 plane crash 2019). Russian pilots lack the survival gear American crews enjoy; Kee Bird's people could survive for two weeks in 1947 with the food and clothing they carried on board, but Russian flight crew carry only life jackets. If rescue's following on swift wings, fine, but two weeks is two weeks. Even Russians find it difficult to survive on a diet of snow.

A Tu-22, operational from 1962 in various incarnations, carries a crew of 3: pilot, gunner, and technical officer. She has two turbojet engines and is roughly 41 meters long. Her max range is just shy of 5,000 km.  The Americans call her Blinder, while to the Russians she is Awl, after the pointed leatherworking tool.

With all that in mind:

Comrades

American tech billionaire turned aviation enthusiast Peter Bell is looking for experts to help him rescue a Cold War era Soviet spy plane. According to his research, the Tu-22 went down in the Arctic tundra in 1968 while on a spy mission, and its location wasn't known to either side until 1974. Thought to be sunk in a frozen lake, recent satellite footage shows she's actually above ground and in remarkable condition given the circumstances. Bell thinks she can be repaired and flown out, at least as far as the nearest friendly airstrip where she can be properly seen to. Bell doesn't think she has any secrets to spill; he believes Soviet special forces stripped her of her surveillance equipment and film back in the 1970s. That doesn't explain why the Russians didn't destroy the airplane, to ensure it didn't fall into American hands. Bell waves off this objection as mere quibbling. He wants this bird; it's the ultimate prize, the crowning jewel of his collection.

Either the characters are experts hired by Bell, or they're special agents (Ordo Veritatis, Edom, your esoteric agency of choice) inserted into Bell's team for reasons best known to the higher-ups. The sponsor agency is convinced there's [McGuffin] in that old plane, and wants the agents to secure it before Bell stumbles onto it.

Whether there is or isn't, it soon becomes clear that the sponsor agency isn't the only one sniffing around. A smooth, bland, Harvard-and-Sorbonne academic and a former military Swede both show interest, but while the characters may rightly suspect both of them of being spies it's difficult to tell which agencies they represent. Is the freewheeling Swede a Russian agent, or a CIA front man? Is the academic getting instructions from Moscow, or the Farm? They each have money to burn, and can call on some serious hitters should the need arise.

Then the characters go to the crash site, far out in the frozen wasteland. Except crash is perhaps the wrong word; this Tu-22 is in such good condition it might have landed at an airstrip. There's nothing to show what happened to the crew. There isn't any surveillance equipment, but what comes as a surprise is there's no indication there ever was any surveillance equipment. This is some kind of modified cargo flight, and the container has Soviet biohazard markings. Why didn't the Soviets try to recover it, or at least destroy it? Why did the Americans just leave it out here, when they've known where it is since the 1970s?

• Bell's Betrayal: This isn't about a Cold War era spy plane. This is about Bell. The whole point is to lure him out to the wastelands so, back home, his business interests can be strip-mined for cash and data. His closest associates/spouse/deadbeat brother has sold out to [Esoterrorists/the Conspiracy/someone equally sinister] and this situation is a set-up, a fake designed to leave him stranded in the back of beyond. The so-called spy plane was dumped here a year ago, and there are clues aboard the Tu-22 that prove it. Maybe those biohazard markings are non-standard, or the parts date to the 2010s not the 1960s. However the sinister agency isn't satisfied with an Arctic boondoggle. The Swede/Academic paid off one or more of the team to sabotage the effort, destroying communications equipment, survival gear, and using special mind-control drugs to bend Bell to their will. The characters need to realize this and get the heck out before the traitor leaves them to rot in the Arctic wastes.
• Doublefake. This has nothing to do with the Arctic. The characters aren't even in the Arctic; this is a clever simulation, a psychological interrogation. They've been captured by [Esoterrorists/the Conspiracy/sinister forces] but the information in their heads is just too valuable to risk physically damaging them to get it.  So their interrogators designed the ultimate mind-game: let the characters think they're in the Arctic, while the drugs/psi-leeches/magicians get to work stripping them clean. Think of this as Thrilling Interrogation, Night's Black Agents style. The closer the interrogators get to their goal, the more the characters sink into the simulation. However if the characters resist then the simulation breaks down: Bell forgets his lines, the plane starts to look like a cardboard prop, and why isn't it really cold up here? Isn't this supposed to be the Arctic?
• The Thing. The Russians don't know what was aboard this Tu-22; all records relating to the crash were destroyed and anyone connected with the mission executed back in Brezhnev's day. Putin would really like to know, which is why he dispatched the Academic/Swede. The Americans think they know, but were never able to confirm their hypothesis and all records relating to its salvage attempt went missing about the same time Richard Helms destroyed the MKUltra records. In spook circles this old Tu-22 is a folktale nobody takes seriously any more, but now Bell's stirred up some bad memories. The powers that be want to be reassured. The McGuffin's lost for good, yes? The cargo destroyed? Things get stranger when the characters find a survivor: Technical Officer Adrik Lebedev, who has absolutely no business being alive forty-odd years after the crash landing yet is apparently asleep at the controls. He's as surprised as anyone to find himself alive; the last thing he remembers is the pilot, Vadim Orlov, saying they were going through heavy turbulence. He won't talk to Westerners; he's a good soldier. But who is he, really? What is he? 

Enjoy!

The Queen's Messenger (NBA)

This video is sourced from Side Note, a channel about obscure historical and geographical topics.

Imagine a man whose mission is to transport secrets. Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's something. It might be a box of Cuban cigars, or it might be the ins and outs of the latest missile crisis. He's very nearly a stock character out of a Hitchcock film, or an Agatha Christie novel: white, almost certainly male, very British, probably in his forties, probably spent his entire working career in the diplomatic service. He's about as unrepresentative of the Commonwealth as it is possible to be, unless you reduce the Commonwealth to Australia and Canada. Even Australia's a bit of a stretch, since judging by that photograph at 1.06 none of them have seen the sun in years. Yet he represents the Commonwealth, carrying communiques back and forth from all corners of the globe each day of his working life. All that for about 25-35K a year, more or less. Plus expenses, presumably, but even so that's a relatively meagre pay packet for that level of responsibility.

Side Note points out that these messengers have been targeted by honey traps, and the risk to their lives (and messages) is real enough. In addition to those examples mentioned in the video, two are known to have died in accidents: a plane crash in South America in 1947, while another went down with the SS Berlin in 1907. The Berlin sinking is one of those explicable tragedies common to sea travel, but the crash of BSAA Star Dust has been fodder for conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists almost from the moment she went down.

Events like these are the stuff of detective novels, and Agatha Christie used a plot much like it in her 1922 novel The Secret Adversary. The kick-off is the sinking of the Lusitania during the Great War, when a male diplomatic courier who knows he isn't getting on a lifeboat hands the McGuffin over to a female passenger to deliver to the embassy. However she never gets there, and the story is about what happens next. Christie doesn't specifically mention King's Messengers, but it's pretty clear what her doomed courier is.

So how to use this in your Night's Black Agents or Dracula Dossier game?

To start with, the Messengers are obvious targets for enemy action. If the Conspiracy can read minds, or pull the Dracula mesmerism trick, then the Messengers are likely targets. Even if the Conspiracy never gets to read those messages in the diplomatic bag, the courier's mind is a very useful secondary target. These are the people in the room where it happens, after all. They've seen and heard things that nobody else had the chance to. Knowing what they know could be invaluable.

Impersonating one would be a very handy way of getting past what might otherwise be impenetrable security. A passport, a tie, the right kind of public schoolboy mannerisms and you're golden. Of course, it would be a shame if your vampire type was one of those allergic to silver; those greyhound pins and insignia would be the very devil. Grit your fangs and bear it, I suppose.

In the Dracula Dossier Edom would probably want to keep half an eye on the Messengers, just in case. Sounds like a job for Osprey, and in a low-key game where Edom is a handful of in-the-know operatives working through friendlies and go-betweens it's likely Osprey is a Messenger. After all, he's got to have some kind of diplomatic day job that allows him to keep an eye on operations worldwide. Besides, he's practically built for it: smooth features, well-preserved, well-dressed, Etonian accent? Hello, Central Casting!

Of course, impersonating a Messenger is a one-time-only gig. It gets you out of a scrape, but almost certainly raises every single red flag it is possible to raise. There are only a few of them, after all. Given the delicacy of their work they're probably monitored very closely. I say probably - we are talking about the English, whose tradition of bumbling towards disaster is well established. Perhaps it's all done on a handshake and a smile. Traitors have skated under the old school tie before, with hardly anyone bothering to delay their progress let alone stop them before they skip across to Moscow. Or Dracula's Castle, in the current fictional narrative.

A player agent as a Messenger is a very intriguing possibility. Being an active diplomatic agent does limit your options; you can't just bunk off for the day to stake vampires if you're meant to be carrying vital messages to, say, the Mission in Bahrain. However a Messenger is the ultimate Mule, more likely to take Archaeology or Art History than Forgery, or perhaps just extra points in Bureaucracy. The sort of agent used to High Society, with a healthy dose of Flattery and Bullshit Detector. Traditionally the Messenger doesn't carry a gun, but that doesn't stop them having a decent Shooting or Hand-to-Hand pool. That said, Preparedness, Shrink, Surveillance and Network seem more likely General spends.

Perhaps your agent is a former Messenger, someone shuffled out of the Service for the good of the Service. Oh, you got your pension and possibly even a gong; after all, nobody really wants to admit what happened even if it is an open secret. You still belong to all your old clubs, and wear the tie now and again. Plus, you have Network friends in all sorts of interesting places. However if anyone's likely to bear a smoldering grudge it's the man who got canned from the most interesting diplomatic job ever. Could be more interesting if it was the woman who got canned; misogyny's a potent motivator, and Lord knows the British establishment's riddled with it. Revenge or Thrill-Seeker (back in the saddle again) seem reasonable Drives, possibly also Transparency and Patriotism.

After all that, a scenario seed:

The PEP (Politically Exposed Person)

Allan Daigliesh, Queen's Messenger, is a happily married man with two sons and a daughter, all rapidly approaching University age. It's been a difficult marriage; constant travel takes its toll, and Allan hasn't always been a model husband. However he's recently been behaving erratically, and the question is whether it's stress of the job or something else. Edom is interested in Allan's case, and brings the agents in to find out what, if anything, is going on.

1. The Cuckoo. One of Allan's children is becoming romantically involved with a Legacy, most likely Billie Harker, Tabitha Holmwood or Thad Morris, but it's Director's choice. Allan knows this, and knows what the Legacy represents because he's had brushes with Edom before. The last thing he wants is for his child to get anywhere near the shadowy world of Edom, but all attempts to break off the relationship have failed. That's why he's nervous; he knows it's only a matter of time before these chickens come home to roost.
2. The Renfield. The Conspiracy is putting pressure on Allan through his wife Belinda, who's traded in the red wine for a different scarlet beverage. The Conspiracy knows Allen makes regular trips to [X] Mission, and wants to see what's in his diplomatic bag. Either Belinda is using Aberrance tricks to get the information, or the Conspiracy's just using her as leverage to get Allen to do what it wants. The pressure's affecting Allan's job performance, and there's a chance he may break under the strain.
3. The Man in the Mirror. Allen's learned one secret too many and wants to change his life for the better. He wants to do something to make it right, and he's started with a little whistleblowing. Perhaps he's made contact with the Journalist (or someone posing as the Journalist) or a foreign diplomat like the Chinese Agent, but whoever it is has Conspiracy links. Allan thinks he's about to do something good, for once; he doesn't know he's talking to the worst kind of people. Assuming, of course, that they are really people …

Enjoy! 

The Bagman (Night's Black Agents)

I've discussed the Pink Panthers before. This clip is a Sundance short from the television feature The Last Panthers, which features (among others) the late John Hurt, and David Bowie's reworking of his Blackstar track is in the credits, for those nostalgic for a world pre-2016. Apart from giving the cunning among you an excellent Thrilling Chase moment (and some cool music to go with your game - the album's less than $10, Directors) it suggests a story idea.

Incidentally if you want to know more about the Pink Panthers I highly recommend the documentary Smash & Grab, available on iTunes.

In the Last Panthers six episode series (which I have not seen but would like to, and it is on iTunes, and I have free time, so YOINK!) the action opens with this heist, but soon delves deep into the criminal underworld that underpins heists like these. With the real-life Panthers what typically happens is that the heisted jewels are given to a Bagman to be sold to a middleman at whatever-the-current-rate is on the dollar, or Euro. The middleman forges whatever documents need to be forged, recuts the jewels when necessary, and sells the diamonds on. Diamonds being very easy to dispose of, the trade is relatively low-risk. Plus, it's basically unsupervised. Currency transactions are monitored when you're moving several thousand dollars at a time. Diamonds worth the same amount or more can fit in your pocket, and raise no alarms when you cross borders.

In the teaser the crooks get into the vault at about 1.50 and then something interesting happens. The lead throws what looks like high-value loot aside, choosing instead to rifle through a file box of stuff. The audience never gets a clear look at what the stuff is. It's organized, it fits into a small box, and looks like a collection of labelled packets.

If anything ever was a McGuffin, this is it. In series plot, the packets are individual diamonds worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. In your game, they could be anything.

Say this theft targets a Conspyramid Node, a false front that pretends to be a jewelers but in fact provides the Conspiracy with X, whatever X is. X could even be diamonds, if you like, and the loss of same leaves the Conspiracy in a delicate financial position, or brings unwelcome attention from the insurance assessor.

Say the people who carry out the hit escape with the McGuffin, which is of vital importance at least to a National and possible International Node. Now the crooks have it, but everyone wants it. The question then becomes, how do your characters get close enough to the crooks to get the McGuffin without frightening off the crooks, or triggering a Conspyramid response?

Because there will be a response, a big, fat, screaming blood-in-its-eye response. The Conspiracy is pissed, and for once in a way it's not aiming its big guns at the agents. The four-alarm-fire bell is going off, and all the underworld wants to know where these crooks are.

The agents may also want to know something else: why the crooks targeted the McGuffin, and what they intend to do with it.

Of course, to find all that out they'll need to get close to someone who knows the crooks well. They'll need to get close to the Bagman. He's the one the crooks have been known to have used before, the one who they might use again - or at least trust, a little.

The recent resource guide features different scenario skeletons for several different possible plots, including flip operations where the goal is to subvert an important character and get them to do [X], whatever [X] may be. In this instance they have to flip the Bagman, so he'll tell them how to contact the crooks who pulled off the caper. The usual leverage won't apply here; the Bagman's known to be a crook, so revealing his criminal past or dodgy dealings won't work. Blackmail's probably a non-starter unless the agents can come up with some pretty convincing leverage.

Likely flip motivators include: kill a Renfield, or even a vampire. Prove convincingly that your knowledge of vampirology is second to none. Prove that you aren't working for the Node, perhaps by destroying Node assets. Use an Interpol (or similarly connected) Network Contact to reduce the Bagman's legal difficulties, perhaps by tearing up or losing some outstanding arrest warrants or getting the Bagman's friend out of prison early.

However, there is a time constraint. If the agents take too long, the Conspiracy will flip the Bagman. The Conspiracy has supernatural leverage at its disposal; it may even be able to divine the crooks' location through the Bagman's spilled entrails. Once the Conspiracy does that, the crooks probably have a very short shelf life.

So the scenario then moves from a flip operation to a Thrilling (possibly Extended) Chase to get to wherever in Serbia the crooks currently hide. If the Conspiracy gets there first then it gets the McGuffin. If the agents do, then they may or may not get the McGuffin but they'll definitely have to fend off or avoid the Conspiracy's rapid response team. Can the agents exfiltrate the crooks before the big bad bloodsuckers get there? Will it all end in blood & tears?

Enjoy!