Rivers is set within Ben Aaronovitch's magical London, where wizards working with the Police venture forth from the Folly to keep the King's peace. The book series has been in print since 2011, has expanded into graphic novel territory and, if we're all very good and keep Santa happy, may one day expand into other media. After all, if Slow Horses can become an international Apple TV hit, perhaps the British star is in the ascendant.
The RPG assumes that the characters are magical police working in London from the Folly. Potentially there are other options, but that's where the main book spends most of its time, so the implication is clear. The timeline is also a little vague, but roughly present day (ish) and the sections It's Not Gritty and It's Not Horror make it clear this isn't the Cthulhu-esque stuff Chaosium is famous for. Aaronovitch says it's Call of Cthulhu but with added hope, and that's broadly the feel of the RPG.
It doesn't allow much scope for alternatives, which ... I mean, the people coming here will be coming via the books, in a way that isn't often seen. Even the Tolkein-heads who went into the Middle Earth RPG or the Bond nuts who bought into the James Bond RPG didn't do it so they could recreate the stories or the movies. They wanted to play in that world. They didn't want to play alongside Frodo or Bond. Not all of them, anyway.
I'm not 100% convinced the same could be said for Rivers. I suspect a lot of the audience for this series came to it via the books and want the Folly, Molly, the yap-o-meter and all the other doo dahs that go with it.
But.
Would I, as GM, want to run that kind of game as a campaign, as opposed to one-shots? I'm not sure.
See, one of the great things about Cthulhu as a setting is its elasticity. If I want to set it in 1890s Tokyo, not a problem. 1920s New York? Can do. 1990s First Gulf War? Got you covered. Gothic romance, nihilistic post-apocalypse, techno-horror, body horror, whatever your shriveled little heart desires, it can supply.
I don't think you could say the same about Rivers. You can set in in the States (there's a whole book about that, you may have heard of it) but the main setting's still relentlessly modern London, and you're a copper. That feels limiting. There's damn near a century between the World War Two devastation that wiped out British wizardry and Peter Grant's recruitment by Nightingale to see off Mister Punch. All kinds of options.
One that leaps out at me straightaway:
Life on Mars Trailer
The thing almost writes itself.
Here's a copper from the present thrust into the 1970s through shenanigans that can only be magical. Thanks to those self-same shenanigans the copper picks up a guardian angel: Nightingale, who's still working through his war trauma and is, at this moment, the only official wizard in London.
Moreover, if Ashes to Ashes in in the mix then, mild spoiler warning, there is a very good reason why all those modern coppers are turning up in the 1970s & 80s and it's exactly the kind of thing that would interest Nightingale.
OK, it's not a setting book Chaosium could publish, for obvious reasons, but at your gaming table you can do as you like, and this is just gagging for it (as Hunt might say).
To be honest, one of my qualms about running Rivers as written is, it feels as though the home team starts with all the advantages. The characters have the resources of the Folly at their disposal, with backup from Frank Caffrey and the Rivers, not to mention Nightingale himself, a Kipling-ish hero with superlative magical ability.
Stalky & Co
Not always, of course. The Rivers in particular may have their own reasons for not getting involved, but the players are going to be looking for backup at some point, and after a while the GM's going to run out of reasons why, say, Caffrey can't turn up with the heavy mob to help the characters out of a fix.
In that respect it's not a million miles away from Ars Magica, which Aaronovitch has said is an inspiration for his series. You can have grogs and companions in the narrative but, sooner rather than later, all eyes will turn to the wiz-liards to handle the problem. Even if that problem is why the soup tastes funny. It's like putting candy on the table next to the hummus and raw carrots. Fingers will reach towards the chocolate, guaranteed.
What other, non-Folly routes could be taken? Keeping the central concept of law versus disorder in the mix?
Well, there's always the private detective route. Given that there are foxes and other non-humans in the setting, this needn't be a human private detective route either. There's something appealing about a vulpine Sherlock Holmes who has to work through a human mouthpiece to get clients. Without a Clue, but with a fox in the Watson role.
Or a ghost. Traditionally in this sort of narrative the ghost must Find Out Who Killed Them (boo, hiss) and stumble into other crimes that need solving along the way. Asian cinema is very good at this kind of story. Too good, honestly. I've been trying to remember the title of a particular film and Google led me to half a dozen others, plus TV series of one kind or another. The Haunted Cop Shop looks like fun, and a lot of the faces are ones I recognize from Mr. Vampire, a mark of quality.
Of course, for many British players, there's only one dead detective worth emulating.
Another route would be to have the police in the center of the narrative but have a fae copper in the main role. Or someone from a different magical tradition. A main character with a supernatural past who doesn't want to be part of the Folly (for whatever reason) but feels drawn to the police as a career. The others in the group might realize there's something funny about their fellow copper but not twig as to the cause. This puts the Folly and Nightingale in a semi-antagonist role. Not that the Folly's about to go on a killing spree, but they don't appreciate non-Newtonians messing about in the doo-dah. This means the main character has to hide their identity both from the police and from the Folly, an additional challenge.
The great thing about both these options is you're not caught in the modern day. They could take place at any time. 1980s London, 1960s London, take your pick. So long as it's after the War, after the Ettersberg massacre of British wizardry, the setting's wide open.
Of course, you could always have the characters come from a completely different magical tradition and not be police. The Society of the Rose, for instance. They might involve themselves in magical shenanigans without having the backing of the law behind them.
Or run a game in which the central location, like a bookshop, is the source of the problem. Some of you may think I'm referring to Bookhounds, but there is a magically influenced shop in the Rivers setting which could be expanded on. A Lovejoy campaign but with actual magic, rather than a suggestion of talent, working behind the scenes. The genus loci in the basement provides the juice, but it's the human player characters who have to save the day. Or find that rare first edition. Whichever best resolves the plot.
Another alternative: a magically trained group, like Bock, Loupe and Stag, members of a [whatever best suits] drafted into the Folly on Peter's initiative. The point being, it's a bit more difficult to get up to nonsense if you're regulated.
But nobody likes regulation, so this sets the Folly up as a not-quite-antagonist. Next door to frenemies. Nobody likes a grass, and the Folly are the prefects and teachers in this analogy. Your group has your own objectives, your own plans, and they might not go hand-in-hand with the Folly's mandate. So you carry on your bits and bobs under the noses of the best of the best of British wizardry, trying not to get caught. To carry the Kipling bit a little further, it's Stalky & Co all over again, except in this version the players are the boys and Nightingale is beloved headmaster Bates. Which presumably makes Peter, Prout.
If you take the Folly at its word, then it would have gone everywhere the Empire went. Once upon a time the Empire went rather a lot of places, which implies Folly-aligned establishments all over the world. The vast majority will be well and truly defunct. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away. However, as the famous Rose Jars of George Buckland prove, the colossal wreck hides forgotten treasures.
Guernsey's a pretty good choice. One of the oldest British police forces, historical artifacts that go back to the dawn of civilization, right smack in the Channel along established smuggling routes. The Folly's bound to have established something out in Guernsey, and from the modern Folly's perspective a bit of historical research into old business might be just the low-stress test a trainee needs. Whether you could have a long-running campaign out there is debatable, but a run of four to six sessions is perfectly doable. The distance from the Folly proper means the characters can't lean on established characters, but they're close enough - not even two hours flight time - that they can't afford to get careless.
Same with Gibraltar. Again, the Folly's bound to have had something out there, especially during the War. Gib boasts the oldest British police service outside the UK. Spain's right next door, so you have plot options. Old British war installations begging to be explored. Again, probably difficult to have a full campaign out there but four to six sessions is doable, and they're close enough to London they can't afford to get careless. Plus on top of plus, Spain has been the British criminal getaway of choice through the 1970s and 1980s thanks to a (brief) lack of an extradition treaty, and Gibraltar is a pretty decent jump-off point for a Folly investigation into the Costa del Crime.
That's it for this week. I hope it's given you some ideas!
Last week I talked about crime scenes with Night's Black Agents in mind. This time I want to delve into a different system: Rivers of London, Chaosium's BRP version of the magic crime series by Ben Aaronovitch.
Rivers is, broadly speaking, a kinder, gentler police procedural.
The procedural, as a genre, tends towards the film noir side of the street. Occasionally the Scandi noir where the innocent are abused and the guilty sometimes go unpunished. Even the lighter-hearted versions, like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, feature rapes, narcotics, assaults. To be fair to Evan Hunter (McBain), the main reason his work seems light-hearted is because it was written in what now seems a kinder age. These days you just wouldn't have a Steve Carella, with his mansion and his nice life, outside of a Hallmark novel.
Whereas apart from the first few novels, where Aaronovitch is finding his way, you don't see a lot of truly awful stuff. There are villains, who are villains in the very traditional sense of the word, and there are heroes. The heroes usually prevail and vanquish those pesky villains. Until next week's exciting episode!
Star Trek: Bride of Chaotica
In the Rivers series Aaronovitch uses a concept called vestigium, a kind of plot coupon which indicates that magic is present in the scene. Most often it's used to show that a particular crime is a magic crime, and therefore falls under Falcon, which is the series' catchphrase for the Folly's magic department. In some instances this becomes a recurring plot coupon, where its appearance in a particular scene indicates that the protagonist is on the right track. Occasionally defined as 'the sort of noise magic makes when you do it,' in-game there's a host of charts to help the Keeper describe vestigia but not that much information on what it is or does.
Because if you had that you would have to give it more definition than perhaps anyone would like, especially Aaronovitch, who might want to use it in unusual ways one of these days and would prefer not to be handicapped by hard-and-fast definitions.
Last week we went into what the police do:
First, they secure the crime scene.
Then they conduct initial investigations of the scene.
They interview witnesses.
They collect evidence for further study.
Securing the crime scene is so it doesn't get interfered with by outsiders. It's not immediately clear what outsiders might do to upset vestigium. Probably nothing, but I suppose someone's own magical taint might be enough to complicate the doo-dah, particularly if that someone was an experienced practitioner or significant magical entity. Their own aura might upset vestigium, on the observation-changes-the-observed principle.
In theory an outsider might destroy the item that gives off vestigium, but the best conductors are things like stone, concrete, PVC. Things that aren't easily destroyed and sometimes not easily moved.
The main book gives a list of potential clues that vestigium can give. The smell of vomit. eg = the victim was disgusted by [event] and this strong emotion repeats every time they think of it. The stronger the vestigia the more powerful the magic must have been that evoked it, which again argues that it can't easily be disrupted except by the passage of time or an equally strong magical influence.
The initial investigation of the scene is where the potential vestigium is first tested. No vestigia means no magic was used in the commission of the crime. The main book makes the point that most of London will have vestigium of some kind, so there is a risk of confusing background noise for actual evidence. Theoretically the GM could develop this into a beautiful red herring, but you want the players to be involving themselves in things like vestigium testing as it's an important part of the campaign world. If they start wondering whether it can be relied on, they will stop testing, which may pose a bigger problem for the GM. Doubting the evidence is one thing. Doubting the foundation stones of the campaign setting is another.
Interviewing witnesses takes on a special resonance when those witnesses might be ghosts, talking foxes, or other peculiar citizens, However, witnesses are witnesses no matter how dead or flea-ridden they may be. This remains basically unchanged, though the characters may have to go to some lengths to gain the trust of those witnesses.
Collecting evidence also remains basically unchanged, though removing bits of London brick and mortar for study back at the lab is frowned upon by English Heritage. Amongst others.
With all that in mind, and borrowing the ancient Star Yard lavatory. now Grade II listed mentioned in a previous episode:
Dying For A Slash
[Slash = British slang, urination]
A terrified woman reports seeing an assault, potentially a murder, near the Star Yard, Holborn, Grade II lavatories. As this happened while an estate agent was showing potential buyers round the Victorian house the pissoir belongs to, this escalated rather quickly.
The house is worth more than 4 million quid, and a local councillor believes themselves to be on rather better terms with the River Fleet (an important character within the campaign world) than perhaps they are. Strings are being pulled. Is this a Falcon case? The councillor is betting yes; after all, the body vanished without a trace. No body means magical funny business, in the councillor's book.
The area, Star Yard, used to be in the warehousing district and the building, now a very expensive house, once was storage for legal documents. The pissoir, a cast iron contrivance, has been there since the warehouse was built in the 1880s. Both London brick and cast iron are excellent conductors of vestigium.
The pissor was in use until relatively recently and has been listed as Historic since 1974.
According to the terrified witness, a young man bleeding from the neck staggered out of the lavatory and made his unsteady way down the street. She was standing in the house opposite at the time, on one of the upper floors, being shown round by the estate agent. The witness is convinced the man had been stabbed. She ran to street level to help him, but by the time she got there he'd vanished.
Witness: Angela Parker, 28 F, American. Her husband Rich, Londoner 30 M works in the City and was present when she saw the injured party but wasn't looking out the window. She was. By the time Rich came to the window the injured party was no longer visible.
Social: Rich is lying about what he saw.
Estate Agent: Connie McEwan of Knight Frank (agency), 30 F, all personality has been ironed out of her unless she's had a few down the pub. Not happy.
The injured party: male, late 20s early 30s, probably BME, jeans, T-shirt with some kind of logo. Angela doesn't remember what the logo was. (Successful Social: she saw a shirt just like it in a vintage shop not far from Star Yard).
Councillor: Edwin Stokes, 31 M, Tory, prides himself on his connections and his suits. He knows almost nothing about the demi-monde and only knows about the Folly from rumor, but pretends to know everything about everyone. He invokes Fleet's name but has only met her once and has no relationship with her.
Research: there was an assault at this location back in 1973. It made the back pages of the local rags and any records pertaining to it have long since gone the way of the dodo. Hard success: the assault gets a mention in music histories and magazines, as the victim was an up-and-coming musician, Rolley 'Rainbow' Martin aka Preston Dinkins.
Vestigia pissoir: laughter, cigarettes, cold weather; an overlay of old malice, like poison in the blood.
In Cthulhu style games, no matter the system, there's nearly always an element of investigation. The protagonists are trying to find out who did what to whom and why. Broadly speaking, they act as police (unless, of course, they are the police). They have the same objectives and work towards the same end result.
Then they conduct initial investigations of the scene.
They interview witnesses.
They collect evidence for further study.
Let's say we're dealing with an event at an occult bookstore, and for purposes of this experiment I'm going to borrow the bookstore from the Nights Black Agents Free RPG day scenario The Van Helsing Letter:
Pierra Athanese runs a small bookstore in the French city of Strasbourg, close to the German border, and the game begins as the Agents arrive there. The occult bookshop is called Athanor. It’s at the end of a narrow, winding dead end street in the medieval Grande Île district of the city.
Further, I'm going to assume the Disgraced Doctor (cameo, Double Tap) is in this scene as a witness.
Rielle knew her days were numbered during med school. The Oxycontin addiction was getting out of hand, even for her standards, and she really didn’t want to put out a shingle and spend fifty years wiping snotty noses and listening to old people complain about lumbago or gout. So she just never “applied herself” and after she graduated, she never went on interviews. Which is fine, interviews are for suckers. She dresses down; jeans and sweat shirts, just like residency.
The exact nature of the crime doesn't matter so much, but let's call it assault. Someone came into Athanor and beat the snot out of shop owner Pierre. The characters arrived on the scene just after this happened. Pierre is oddly reluctant to say what happened.
Secure the Scene Crime scenes are fragile. They are a snapshot in time and the more time goes by the blurrier that snapshot looks. That's without even considering those who might damage it by removing evidence, adding evidence, or just generally being a pain in the neck.
In this example the protagonists aren't cops. If anything, they're the opposite. They have no official standing so they're going to have to rely on personality and perseverance to keep the scene secure. This may involve posting a player character on the door to make sure nobody gets in. Someone will need to go round the shop making sure nobody else is on the premises, that there are no other ways in or out.
Conduct the Initial Examination. If this were a homicide, the first thing the detectives would do is ignore the corpse. It isn't going anywhere. Of all the things in the scene, it's the least likely to change in the next few minutes, and it's going to be investigated carefully so odds are any evidence will be found. Whereas the scene itself is mutable, and this is probably the one time it will be looked at carefully. Anything not found now will likely never be found.
In game, as Director, you need to ensure that there's at least one clue in this crime scene that leads somewhere. Depending on how complicated you want the crime scene, you could plant multiple clues. You may want multiple ways to find that same clue, if you think the players might not have the appropriate pool or not use it when needed.
In this scene, Forensics (possibly Outdoor Survival or Reassurance on witness Rielle): there's some wet footprints on the floor. It hasn't been raining, but there is a puddle out back of the shop; water collects there due to bad drainage. Whoever left those marks came from the back of the shop. There's an alley there which isn't easily seen except from a neighboring bistro, The Drunky Fox Social Club. The alley serves both the bookstore and the bistro's kitchen.
Interview Witnesses. There are two in the scene, disgraced doctor Rielle and the shop owner, Pierre. Witnesses are valuable for detectives because at some point they need to convince a jury that A happened because of B. Witnesses are very persuasive; people tend to believe their lying eyes.
For protagonists in a game like this, juries are the last thing on their mind. They just want evidence, any kind of evidence, to lead them to the next scene. The question is, are these witnesses truthful?
Pierre is keeping his mouth shut. He says he didn't get a good look at them, it all happened so fast. One of them wore a brightly colored shirt. The other spoke German. That's all he remembers. Bullshit Detector knows he's lying.
Rielle is also in the scene. She was in the back of the store, browsing, and the attackers didn't know she was there. Pharmacy or a 3-point Medic notices her calmness, apathy and short attention span - classic signs of opiate addiction. This suggests she may not be a reliable witness. She says there was only one attacker and that he was short, cropped hair, wearing a hooded jacket with a logo on it. She doesn't remember the logo.
Again, you could put more than one clue in this scene, but a lot depends on how complicated you want to make it. You already have one clue - the footprints. Another clue here is fine, but add too many and you'll be drowning in clues.
I would put in one clue and make it obtainable from either witness. Interrogation on Rielle, Intimidation on Pierre. Use the wrong technique on either witness and they clam up, making the clue unobtainable from that witness.
The clue: the attacker was finishing off an energy drink as they came into the shop, and dropped it on the floor. That can will have fingerprints, maybe even DNA evidence, which will help to identify them.
Of the two witnesses, Rielle is the more reliable, but the players won't know that.
Collect Evidence for Further Study. This will include that can, which is still there on the floor whether the players got the clue from the witnesses or not. The players still have a chance to pick that up. They could examine Pierre's injuries, to see if the damage was done by a professional or an enthusiastic amateur. They could look around the shop for further evidence.
Again, I would be inclined to have only one clue available from this avenue of investigation, but notice how these clues are piling up. It's a simple scene, but we already have two significant clues. A third one can be had by collecting evidence, and in this case I would be inclined to have that clue available to those who follow up on those wet footprints. They lead to the alley which is next to the Drunky Fox Social Club, and if they go there they discover that the attacker came back through the alley, into the bistro's kitchen, and out through the front of the bistro. On their way, the attacker dumped a hooded jacket into the bistro's garbage, probably attempting to change their look in case they were being followed. Witnesses in the bistro (Reassurance) identify the attacker as a woman with close cropped hair; opinions vary as to whether her hair was blonde, dark or artificially colored. All agree she was short and muscular. The jacket (Streetwise, possibly Urban Survival if the character has Strasbourg as a familiar city) has the logo of a Strasbourg martial arts dojo.
In summary: yes, you want a series of scenes that connect up to reach certain Core moments which, in turn, lead to a resolution. There will be a certain amount of improvisation but improv doesn’t solve all your problems. Improv is a support for your existing structure, not a replacement for that structure.
Crucially, you need to bear in mind that your structure isn’t some magical castle in the clouds that can only be reached by imagination wizards. Your structure is very simple. It starts with this:
You put yourself in the characters’ shoes and ask yourself, if I had to answer this question, what would I do?
The same design principles apply here. Slightly modified, because this time you're not putting yourself in the characters' shoes. You're putting yourself in the attacker's shoes, the person committing the crime. You ask yourself, if I had to do this thing, how would I do it? From there, you piece together a line of action which in turn leaves a trail of clues. You entered from the back of the shop, you did what you came there to do, and you left the same way, trying to throw off pursuers by changing your appearance.
Each of these activities has the potential to leave a trail of clues. You know this. The question is, what clues, and how best to collect them?
Without wishing to post private business, things at my end got very complicated this week. Still processing. This will be a short post.
From the main book:
[Blocks are] something that blocks the passage, attack, or influence of a vampire. It may be an absolute bar, or she may be able to penetrate it with a successful Aberrance test against Difficulty 8. Penetrating a block may still do damage: +1 per incident, or per round spent across the block. Many banes (fire, holy water, iron, sunlight) also act as blocks.
Fright Night (1985)
Two of the most famous Blocks are running water and crossing the threshold. Some might be forgiven for thinking that vampires have peculiar tastes.
Rivers and streams have a long body of folklore, predating written history. We sometimes find old remnants of these practices, sacrifices to the river gods. In Greek lore you might sacrifice to the river spirit to ensure safe crossing for your troops or give up something valuable to you in exchange for magical favors. You could enchant items in rivers for future use; if you knew the right ritual, you could bathe a silver coin in that running water and turn it into a lucky piece.
Thresholds are the boundary between the house, which is protected by house spirits, sometimes called genius loci. The Romans would maintain regular sacrifice to their house spirits to ensure good fortune. You hear echoes of that belief in stories about pixies, imps and similar who will work tirelessly for the family but which can take offence and leave, say, if someone gives them new clothes or new shoes. People would bury black cats in the walls of a new-built house, or put a penny under the hearthstone before it was laid. I know of at least two local examples of someone burying kinfolk under or near the front porch of the house. In one of those examples, the bodies were unearthed by accident when a future owner decided to lay some new plumbing. Now, whether they did that out of some folk memory or just to keep their loved ones close is an open question. But if you assume that entombing a cat in the foundations can give you protection and luck, how much more potent would a person be?
All of which to say. it's not the vampire who has peculiar tastes. The vampire knows what we have forgotten; that there's something in that river, in that building, which prevents them gaining access. To the vampire, that thing, whatever it may be, is probably as visible as a brick wall would be to us. If the Block is being caused by spirits or ghosts, the vampire can see those spirits or ghosts.
Which suggests that the vampire can, if so inclined, bypass those blocks. If they really work at it.
It makes sense that the Block means something more to vampires than a simple wall, some supernatural version of the Go To Jail monopoly card. Or, in NBA terminology, some Mutant or Satanic version.
With all that in mind, and borrowing from the main book:
[Satanic] This is a full-blooded vampire, a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. Blocks: wild roses.
Evocative, but why?
It's said that when the Virgin Mary kissed a white rose it blushed and turned red, creating the first red rose. When the infant Zoroaster was placed on burning logs in an attempt to kill him, they turned into a bed of roses. Bacchus, when chasing a nymph, is supposed to have been blocked by a wall of thorns which he turned into a wall of roses, and then back into a wall of thorns when it suited him.
Given we're talking Satanic, the Virgin Mary connection seems the most suitable. The rose and its thorns are beloved of the Virgin Mary. When the vampire sees this plant it doesn't see a simple rose. It sees the Virgin.
Presumably there's something about the cultivation process which robs the rose of this association. So roses grown for a flower shop wouldn't do. But perhaps a rose bush encouraged to grow along the wall of, say, a convent, would, inasmuch as the roses aren't cultivated or controlled, just allowed to grow in a particular location.
[Alien] Fully awakened, an alien stone is a being of unfathomable power, potentially capable of altering gravity and space-time within tens of miles. Blocks: chaotic streams (running water, random charge fluctuations, anything else that cannot be perceived as a whole.
Again, evocative, but there are plenty of things that cannot be perceived as a whole. Oxygen, for instance. I'm sitting in a ton of it right now. I can't see it, and I can't perceive the full extent of it.
Would a running hose be sufficient to block an alien vampire?
What even is a random charge fluctuation, in-game? Is this like the TV version of an electrical charge, all blue lights and crackly noises? Are we just talking static electricity? Could you Block an alien vampire by wandering around in a lightning storm?
The text suggests that they 'created' humans in their image, a result of early contact between the stones and our distant soon-to-be-intelligent ancestors. The text also suggests that perceiving their own perception sets up a feedback loop, trapping them in their own consciousness. I would be tempted to suggest that something like running water works in the same way; it forces them to perceive their own perception. Water reflects, after all. Running water also reflects, just not in a way easily understood by the onlooker. This would make something like the alien stone, to whom perception is all, frantic, their 'minds' constantly racing in an attempt to understand the thing it is 'seeing.'
I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. Saw the original when it came out, loved the first three films, and after that just dropped off the rock. Gameplay-wise, I've never enjoyed shooters and flight sims only interest me if it's Great War biplanes stuff, so the Star Wars franchise never caught my attention.
However, I am an X-Com fan.
When people started describing Zero Company as X-Com but in the Star Wars universe, I was on board.
This isn't Not Quite Review Corner so I shan't go into the bits and bobs, except to say that there isn't as much X-Com here as I'd hoped and the game overall feels as if they had a lot of ideas and not much execution. Plus, for a hero-based game, no romance options, which seems a little boneheaded. Even X-Com's Chimera Squad, which this closely resembles, hinted at relationships between the characters. The closest Zero Company gets to this is Bennic's puppy dog eyes.
The problem with villains is, too often they exist only to do one thing: be foiled by the player characters. Villains are punching bags, paper Nazis, colorful targets that sit on the far end of the shooting range and never shoot back, or at least not accurately. There’s nothing unique about them, nothing that makes the players think ‘I want to know more about this guy.’ If the players don’t feel engaged by the villain, they won’t respect him, and at that point the whole thing falls flat ... Consider this tactic, when designing your own villains. Find out what they want, what they fear people will find out about them, what they’re prepared to kill for.
Zero Company has this problem in spades.
Star Wars in general has a villain problem, to be honest. The setting doesn't have that many honest-to-God villains and, when it finds one, it re-uses that character again and again till whatever personality they once had has lost all meaning.
Fathom is the worst example of this. The definition of a punching bag. I have no idea what she wants or why she wants it. I know she's doing Bad Things and, as the hero of the series, I have a vested interest in stopping Bad Things.
She has subordinates, Cultists. I have no idea what they want. Or why they let themselves get infected with this plague that seems to be the McGuffin of the narrative. It gives them cool powers and cool powers make the world go round, so here we are.
Cults recruit on broadly the same principles as spies. They go MICE - money, ideology, coercion, ego.
Cults, like OPFOR, have the same important characteristics:
Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
Goals.
Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.
Let's say for the sake of it that this particular cult got its start in a card game during the Great War.
Six young men sat in a bunker playing cards, waiting for orders. The game intensified. All eyes were on it. The stakes went as high as they possibly could. Then, at the moment of revelation, enemy shelling obliterated the bunker, and only one of those men survives.
That man is convinced that providence spared him only because the game wasn't over, and if it ever ended somehow, at that moment he'd die.
He collected all the playing cards used in the game. The only one missing was one of the aces; he has no idea what happened to it, but he's convinced it's still out there.
That man became the nucleus of a peculiar cult: the Players.
It started within his unit. Just a few listeners to his crazy stories. They didn't take him too seriously, but it was a fun story and he told it well. Then they saw what happened next, how he dodged every bullet, bit of shrapnel or bomb. It was uncanny. Risks that would have killed a normal person, he survived. He started collecting medals, getting promotions. Soon he was in command of the company, and those few listeners stuck to him like glue, certain that whatever luck had attached to him would benefit them too, if they were loyal.
If.
Living can go to your head. A man can be awarded medals, do remarkable deeds, but if there's no moral compass, no center - and in this case whatever was there before soon eroded to nothing - a man can be convinced the world exists to benefit him and him alone.
After the war the hero went home again, followed by a few true believers. Old soldiers convinced their commander could do no wrong, utterly certain that the same luck which dogged his heels in wartime would follow him devotedly in peace.
They were the first Players.
Now the former commander has set up a gambling operation in [select big city]. The Players are part of that operation, all sharing the same Ideology. Others drawn into the cult come in because of Money or Ego. Either they want what the cult seems to have (financial success) or they think they have what it takes to be winners (ego).
The commander has set up a household god totem somewhere in the gambling operation. It might be in his offices or somewhere close by, but it can't be outside the gambling house/casino. The body of this household god is trench art, made of old shell casings and bits of bone. Cordite stench clings to it.
The commander believes he is becoming a vampiric entity and is pondering the utility of blood sacrifice. It's appealing. He has his eye on a couple luscious young things who might do. His reasoning is, it was blood sacrifice that got him this far, but those deaths can only power so much. If there is a way of living forever by consuming the lives of others, well ...
He thinks he has five lives' worth of immortality juice right now: the five who died before that card game ended. But he doesn't know what five lives' worth is, really. Can it be measured in decades, years? Months? Does that mean he can be killed five times before the end and, if so, how many lives did he use up during the War?
The two recruitment vectors are the signature features of the cult: Money, and Ego. In any encounter with the cult or its supporters, those two factors are always evident. They show off all the trappings of wealth, or they inflate the ego of their victims.
The cult's Power comes from money and all that it will buy. It doesn't have legions of soldiers (though its core membership have military experience) and any expertise (safecrackers, pickpockets, card sharps and so on) are hired help. The experts might be seduced into the cult, but they don't start off as recruits nor are they loyal to the commander.
It has a private Goal and a public one.
The private goal is to find a way to turn the commander into a vampire. Not all the Players are briefed on this goal; the commander is keeping it close to the chest. Thefts, research, the hiring of occult experts are all geared towards this private goal.
The public goal is to increase the status of the commander and, by extension, the Players. Political and economic power, mostly. If that means aligning with certain groups (eg. the Fascists) then that's what they will do. This power feeds the household totem, which in turn gives its benefits to the Players, increasing their luck, their ability.
The cult's assets include the gambling house/casino, a host of civilian gamblers and other low-level fodder, the Players (the main core of whom are ex-military) and any experts they might hire with the money the casino generates.
Now, the commander. What does he want, what does he fear people will find out about him, what is he prepared to kill for?
The commander wants immortality. Life is sweet: the War taught him that. He wants it all, every last drop. He likes being in charge of a casino, having loyal followers, and the Players are his friends. He would dispose of it all, including the Players, in a heartbeat if it meant he got to live.
He fears that missing card. It's out there, somewhere. Constant appeals to the household totem have not told him where it is. He fears that someone will find out his weakness, uncover that missing card, and put an end to him by finishing the game. He keeps all the other cards locked away in a safe, and if someone were to steal those cards he would become frantic.
He's prepared to kill for immortality. It doesn't matter who he kills. It could be a baby in the cradle, but if killing that baby would give him even another decade of guaranteed life, he'd slaughter it without a second thought.
I've deliberately not mentioned locations or settings. Obviously, this would work well in a setting after the Great War, so Trail of Cthulhu, Call, Bookhounds and so on, but it could as easily be made to work in a setting outside Earth - Eversink, say. You'd need to change little. Fireballs rather than shellfire, that kind of thing. Or Paris, rather than London, if you'd rather make this Dreamhounds than Bookhounds. Cairo, and make the commander a seeker into Egyptian promises of immortality, for a Tombhounds take.
It's your Cult.
Vitaï Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
Image taken from Gutenberg Holidays & Happy Days, HAMISH HENDRY
It's a bank holiday weekend and lightning is flashing outside, which makes me think of fireworks and the likelihood the electricity is about to go out.
Bonfires were accompanied by fireworks from the 1650s onwards, and it became the custom after 1673 to burn an effigy (usually of the pope) when heir presumptive James, Duke of York, converted to Catholicism. Effigies of other notable figures have found their way onto the bonfires, such as Paul Kruger, Margaret Thatcher, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Vladimir Putin. The "guy" is normally created by children from old clothes, newspapers, and a mask.
The streets are alive with the sound of urchins, begging a penny for the guy. Some of the urchins are a little mature; students from the local [medical college/university/fill in the blank] are pooling their resources for what they say will be a spectacular guy, to be burnt two streets from the Bookshop's door.
One of those students, Larry Tinston, was recently caught shoplifting. At least, that's what the shop staff call it. Larry says he was just borrowing that peculiar book, as it gave him an idea. It's the kind of book [insert occult grimoire here] that the general public really oughtn't have in their possession. Fortunately the book was put back, no harm done.
Except it's gone again. Larry? Where is Larry now?
Option One: A Loud Bang. The book in question contains alchemical secrets, and Larry wants it because it's given him inspiration for a really good firework. The sort that will get attention for miles around. The plan is to use it to blow the guy's head off, and it will. It will send out a signal to Cthughua too, which Larry does not appreciate.
Option Two: A Cacophany of Devils. Larry, ever the model-maker, wants this book because he wants to design a really splendid, life-size model of devils dragging the guy to Hell. There's something about the illustrations that calls to him. The devils are Nightgaunts, and while the models themselves are harmless their depiction will attract attention from one of the many cults of London. Intrigued, they descend upon the shop. Where is that book? There's a customer who wants it badly.
Option Three: A False Flag. Larry didn't take the book, honest. Someone else took advantage of the situation and half-inched it. Now Larry, amateur sleuth, will clear his name by finding the culprit. The thief is a megapolisomancer who's wanted this book for a while, but, more importantly, they want Larry's help making a model. If Larry agrees, the consequences may be felt later, when the megapolisomancer uses the model in their workings. Perhaps the Hounds should help amateur sleuth Larry before it's too late?
This week’s post is loosely based on this Guardian news article about museum robberies and a recent EUROPOL report. The report is timely; Friday that same week there was another article about a museum robbery in which a diamond necklace belonging to Egyptian royalty was snatched.
“Additionally, some thieves apprehended in recent cases appear to coordinate their efforts on an ad hoc basis, often recruited locally through social media and instant communication channels, without prior connections to each other. This differs from the usual structure of criminal networks involved in cultural goods trafficking, which typically operate in a core group organised around a leader.” EUROPOL report
The full report can be had here. It's not long. Broadly speaking, the papers published the bits everyone will be interested in.
All of which made me think of Night’s Black Agents and the recruitment process.
Night’s Black Agents’ central conceit says espionage assets brought in by the vampire Conspiracy are used, abused, abandoned, and now find themselves on the run from their former employers. In a Bourne-style world, what is it like when Treadstone (or the equivalent) is a supernatural horror show?
One of the recurring issues in a setting such as this is how to bring the characters on board. What was the inciting incident?
In another post I speculated a potential infection vector: the Kill Team.
Thanks to EURPOL, there’s another way in: the Heist.
The protagonists are all recruited to carry out a museum robbery. The target: Dacian artefacts held in a museum in Ghent. Once they complete the task they’re supposed to take the stolen items across the border to France, where they’re to hand off the artefacts to their paymaster in exchange for large bags full of cash.
Dacians: The German linguist Paul Kretschmer linked daos to wolves via the root dhau, meaning to press, to gather, or to strangle – i.e. it was believed that wolves would often use a neck bite to kill their prey.
Done and done.
The characters are brought in by an unknown third party who reached out via, say, Telegram. Their job is to break in and steal a particular thing, but they are encouraged to steal other things to make it look like a ‘normal’ robbery. Plus, anything extra they steal is a bonus to their pay packet.
Ghent: a historic medieval port town in Belgium, once big on textiles, now big on tourism and shipping. Very significant architecturally, practically car-free in the old town center. Infested with religious architecture and churches, which may be significant to any supernatural element that dislikes religion or has religious Banes.
Museum of Antiquity and Harmony (Double Tap Establishing Shot):
Statuary, paintings, and the wonders of antiquity surround you on every side. You move along with other tourists, past bored museum guards and sophisticated alarm systems you could easily hack. The museum has high ceilings, a maze of large rooms filled with the detritus of history, and enough museum visitors to make action somewhat problematic.
extras and cameos: Knowledgeable historian, pretentious art student, clump of foreign tourists; Ex-con Forger, Hacker, Occult Bookstore Owner, Second-Story Man.
clues: Mysterious carved tablet recently put on display; obscure 17th century portrait that looks identical to a well-known billionaire; ancient weapon thick with legends.
rules effects: Spending a point of Art History allows the agent to befriend a museum administrator or art historian, giving them inside information about how the museum is run. Alarm systems range from Difficulty 2 to 6 against Infiltration tests, depending on the museum and the exhibit. Cinematic jewels or the main prize of the operation, of course, have multiple layers of security and a final, laser filled Difficulty 8 chamber.
in a fight: Ancient weapons and armor can still be used in combat; priceless statues too easily toppled; poles with velvet ropes still attached, used as crude bludgeons.in a chase: Dive through interactive exhibits of video and holograms; lift disguises from the museum gift shop; slow and mingle with the crowd as a maze of room displays blend into one another.
Museum Backstory (core clue): this place has a peculiar reputation. It's privately owned and those guards aren't your standard retired cop looking for an easy gig.
Museum Backstory (point spend): This museum is privately funded by the Catholic Church. Certain dignitaries and experts are often seen here. Director's choice as to who that is. but it should be someone fairly significant, eg. Dracula Dossier's Mysterious Monsignor. The guards are former members of the Vatican's Rapid Intervention Group (GIR). Occult Studies will notice vampiric Banes in strategic locations.
The Meet Cute (Opening Scene)
The protagonists gather in a location assigned to them by their employer, probably a shady low-class hotel somewhere close to the Port of Ghent. It's the kind of place beloved by truck drivers and other transients who aren't here for tourism. This may be the first time any of them have met, though they may know each other's professional reputation.
Whatever equipment they might need, including a vehicle, is supplied by their employer and can be found on site. A regular car, most likely, though if any of the agents have cherry level Mechanics they can specify that the car is souped-up or has a modification of their choice. Protagonists with specific equipment needs (the Hacker, the Wire Rat) can also have those supplied now.
The job is to hit the museum, grab a particular item (the McGuffin, assumed to be some kind of Dacian artefact of interest to the Conspiracy) as well as any other item(s) they see fit, and get across the border to France where the hand-off will take place in a warehouse not far from Lille.
Surprise Pregnancy (The Heist)
The agents hit the museum however they wish.
On their way in they find themselves face-to-face with a significant, nemesis-level NPC. Perhaps it's the Mysterious Monsignor or someone of equivalent campaign importance. It might even be an Edom dignitary. The obvious one is Pearl, who was brought in by the Vatican to give his professional opinion regarding museum security. Whoever it may be, their mere presence in the scene ups Heat by 3 as alarm bells go off all across the continent, and this increases by a further 2 if that NPC is significantly injured (or, God forbid, killed) in the ensuing mayhem.
Additional complication: there is a Very Valuable Item, say, a diamond necklace, easily stolen. However, if the protagonists take it they incur the wrath of the owners, who lent it to the museum. The owners aren't the Conspiracy but they have access to considerable resources of their own, not all of them human. They launch a parallel chase, trying not to attract the attention of the authorities (or Edom or the Vatican) but they really want their McGuffin back and aren't fussy about the casualty rate. While this does complicate the protagonists' lives it opens up a Yojimbo option.
Why Choose? (The Hand-Off)
Assuming the protagonists get away with it and get to that warehouse near Lille, they discover their mysterious employer mysteriously dead. At any rate, there's a corpse on the ground (possibly several) and their Telegram messages are going unanswered. Turns out there is a Third Party in the mix, the Conspiracy. The Conspiracy didn't want the heist, didn't need the headache it caused, but, well ... there is that McGuffin, all valuable and shiny ... gosh, it would be a shame to let it go back to that musty old museum ... you know what, let's just make lemonade out of these here lemons. In fact, if these resourceful little suns-of-guns want it, there's a job opportunity waiting for them in Lille. Of course, the benefits aren't great, but life itself is a benefit, don't you think?
The protagonists must make a choice. Do they want to work for the Conspiracy? If not, they'd better be prepared to go on the run, as of right this minute.
In fact, not only will they be on the run from the Conspiracy, they'll also be on the run from the Vatican and whoever that other party was they unexpectedly ran into at the museum. If they carried out that Very Valuable Item robbery, well, that's another powerful enemy to worry about. Perils of greed, honestly.
For that matter, they still don't know who their mysterious employer was, or whether there's someone out there in the darkness connected with their mysterious employer who would really like to know what happened at that museum in Lille. So that's yet another complication to think about.
Then of course there are the authorities. You know, EUROPOL. Who would like to arrest them. For crimes.
Gosh darn it all. If only the protagonists had some friends!
