Bookhounds: Character Cameos

The street-sellers of stationery, literature, and the fine arts, however, differ from all before treated of in the general, though far from universal, education of the sect. They constitute principally the class of street-orators, known in these days as “patterers,” and formerly termed “mountebanks,”—people who, in the words of Strutt, strive to “help off their wares by pompous speeches, in which little regard is paid either to truth or propriety.” To patter, is a slang term, meaning to speak. To indulge in this kind of oral puffery, of course, requires a certain exercise of the intellect, and it is the consciousness of their mental superiority which makes the patterers look down upon the costermongers as an inferior body, with whom they object either to be classed or to associate. The scorn of some of the “patterers” for the mere costers is as profound as the contempt of the pickpocket for the pure beggar. Those who have not witnessed this pride of class among even the most degraded, can form no adequate idea of the arrogance with which the skilled man, no matter how base the art, looks upon the unskilled. “We are the haristocracy of the streets,” was said to me by one of the street-folks, who told penny fortunes with a bottle. “People don’t pay us for what we gives ’em, but only to hear us talk. We live like yourself, sir, by the hexercise of our hintellects—we by talking, and you by writing.”

But notwithstanding the self-esteem of the patterers, I am inclined to think that they are less impressionable and less susceptible of kindness than the costers whom they despise. Dr. Conolly has told us that, even among the insane, the educated classes are the most difficult to move and govern through their affections. They are invariably suspicious, attributing unworthy motives to every benefit conferred, and consequently incapable of being touched by any sympathy on the part of those who may be affected by their distress. So far as my experience goes it is the same with the street-patterers. Any attempt to befriend them is almost sure to be met with distrust. Nor does their mode of life serve in any way to lessen their misgivings. Conscious how much their own livelihood depends upon assumption and trickery, they naturally consider that others have some “dodge,” as they call it, or some latent object in view when any good is sought to be done them. The impulsive costermonger, however, approximating more closely to the primitive man, moved solely by his feelings, is as easily humanized by any kindness as he is brutified by any injury.

The patterers, again, though certainly more intellectual, are scarcely less immoral than the costers. Their superior cleverness gives them the power of justifying and speciously glossing their evil practices, but serves in no way to restrain them; thus affording the social philosopher another melancholy instance of the evil of developing the intellect without the conscience—of teaching people to know what is morally beautiful and ugly, without teaching them at the same time to feel and delight in the one and abhor the other—or, in other words, of quickening the cunning and checking the emotions of the individual.

Among the patterers marriage is as little frequent as among the costermongers; with the exception of the older class, who “were perhaps married before they took to the streets.” Hardly one of the patterers, however, has been bred to a street life; and this constitutes another line of demarcation between them and the costermongers. 

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

These next few posts are going to delve into Bookhounds territory, with some Cameos. 

Cameos are an idea I'm going to borrow from Night's Black Agents. Briefly, a cameo is a short description of an NPC the agents may meet. It's stat-light and intended for immediate use, the point being that you, as Keeper, may need to pull a rabbit out of a hat at short notice and this is as good a Lapine as you're going to get, Mr. Magician.

From Double Tap:

Each writeup includes: important abilities, a physical description, a story hint in the text, and the preferred Interpersonal method to win their cooperation. Then come three things they can provide as an asset (for the vampires or for the agents), three clues they possess, and three handles for roleplaying them.

Henry Mayhew published his work in the 1850s and 60s. The great thing to bear in mind is, if Mayhew's writing about it in the mid-19th century, then it probably still exists in some form in the early 20th century. Not exactly like, obviously; but enough like that you, as Keeper, can borrow ideas Mayhew expounds for your own work. 

We're looking at someone older. Someone born in the 19th century, who grew up in the shadow of the greats - or at least, the people they thought were great. They live by the dodge, whatever their particular dodge is. They have a line of patter that they have practiced and used a thousand thousand times before. They're a bit like comedians, in that they make a complicated spiel seem effortless. Their self-esteem is impervious to the battering of fate. Whoever this is, they probably belong to what Mayhew would have described as the third class of patterers:

those who, whatever their early pursuits and pleasures, have manifested a predilection for vagrancy, and neither can nor will settle to any ordinary calling.

They are constantly on the move and probably operate from a barrow, which they either push around themselves or have a donkey to do it for them. Their wares are broken down and tired, but that doesn't matter. Their bones ache, but that doesn't matter. They have an inner well of pure optimism that sustains them through the coldest winter, and they know things. All kinds of things. In fact, if there is one Bookhounds pool which they have in abundance, it's The Knowledge. They may or may not know a little Magick as well, depending on the nature of your chronicle.   

With all that in mind:

The Patterer

Auction 3, Conceal 5, Shadowing 7

Grocer George/Judy, so called because their parents were grocers in Leadenhall Market, has been a fixture of the scene for as long as the Hounds can remember. Nobody's sure how the Grocer came to be a street vendor. There are all kinds of stories. The most popular is that they were wronged in marriage, and went on the dodge immediately afterward. 

The Grocer allegedly has family still living, scattered across the City of London. It's true that children flock to the Grocer, their so-called nephews and nieces, but whether any of them are actually the Grocer's family is an open question. The Grocer has a way with children. The stories the Grocer tells keep them wide-eyed and begging for more. 

The Grocer is a superstitious soul and will not sell or do anything on a Sunday, except huddle under a bridge or somewhere else safe and wait for the day to be over. It's impossible to get the Grocer to do a stroke of work, or any other thing, on a Sunday. They barely eat on the Sabbath. Yet on the Monday they rise bright and early, march off to Smithfield for a hearty breakfast, and then get about their weekly routine. 

The Grocer's main gaff is fortune telling. There's many a merchant who swears by the Grocer's ability to see into the future by the patterns birds form when they fly. The jury's out as to whether this is some kind of druidic survival into the modern era, or whether the Grocer is a servant of darker powers.

As Ally

Access to any one London location or resource capable of granting 1 point Mythos or Magick. Grocer happens to know the secret of this particular location/resource and can get the Hounds to it without trouble. If the Grocer were not there, then the Hound either will not find the location/resource or will have to fight to get it. 

As Clue

The Grocer knows who's been troubling Fate recently; the Grocer remembers, after the course of a very long and disreputable life, where old secrets are buried; the Grocer, through their Knowledge, can tell the Hounsds the history of a particular London location or show them the location of a London secret.

In Play

The mysterious old soul, part Falstaff, part Chaplin, who flits in and out like a sparrow. They run impossible risks and make it seem effortless. When talking, they do not shut up, but when not talking they pay attention to everything, no matter how small or meaningless. They always have an old crust or dab of food hidden somewhere on them. There's always a new bit of clothing, it might be a hat, a scarf, a shoe, and the Grocer can never remember where it came from. As an auctioneer, the Grocer never takes a bribe or favours one side or the other; they are scrupulously honest and not easily fooled, when an auctioneer. At all other times, they're as bent as a dog's hind leg.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents: Burn Stakes

OK, last post for this series.

Let's talk about the opening scenario and what it means to play Burn Stakes.

I'm going to try to avoid scenario spoilers but I can't discuss without spoiling a little bit, so be warned.

One of the Agents has a contact, a fence who deals in rare books and stolen art, named Pierre Athanese; he’s an old scoundrel and a crook, but he knows the stakes. 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.

This scenario assumes the characters are after a particular letter allegedly written by Van Helsing, and that the McGuffin is also the target of at least one other faction. There are a couple of moments within the scenario where sound, and potentially music, are important parts of the narrative. One of the main plot devices is a church bell whose ringing affects the supernatural entity at the heart of the dilemma. All this works very well with the ongoing plot device of the Pentheus and Maenad; not much change needed to make it work with the campaign device.

So far, so good. What about this Burn Stakes stuff?

Well:

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

The obvious way to make the players keenly aware of Burn style games is to challenge their stability every chance you get. There are plenty of opportunities to do this in combat scenes. Or in scenes with emotional focus, such as those involving a Source of Stability or similarly important person.

Difficulty Numbers for Stability tests also change depending on the character’s attitude toward, or familiarity with, the destabilizing event. Characters who would logically be inured to a given event face a Difficulty of 3, while those especially susceptible face a 5. [main book p 82]

Seeing a fresh corpse, for example, is worth a 1-point potential loss. A grisly murder is potential 3. Seeing a Network contact killed is 5, and so on. All of which could become very relevant in the opening scene, when the characters' contact Pierre Athanese is threatened, and possibly killed, by Conspiracy goons. In my version, I had Athanese's shop on fire within about half an hour of scenario start. Your milage may vary, but as a rule the more physical damage you dish out to third parties like Athanese, the more emotional damage you cause the characters. 

That doesn't mean you want corpses every other page. Repetition blunts impact. You could as easily injure Athanese or let the agents watch Athanese's life's work go up in smoke as the bookstore burns. There are many ways to endure loss; death isn't the only stressor. For that matter, gruesome injuries to the opposition can be helpful too. Gouged out eyes and broken teeth can happen to anyone. Plus, having a human opponent attack is a potential 2 point and killing someone in a fight is a potential 3 point. So many options!

Never forget to layer those stressors. Yes, there's the potential for Stability loss in the opening scene. There's also a good chance to gain Heat. Car chase, involvement in a burglary or assault, all this in a tourist district too ... that Heat will be ticking up. I would advise you keep a list of potential uptick items close at hand so you can impose them as necessary, and have some Police on standby. Are they Conspiracy friendly? Who can say? They're definitely a pain in the ass, which should motivate the players. 

Even if you don't use the Police in the opening scene it should be obvious to everyone in that scene that you *could* have used them if you wanted to. Burn isn't just a mechanic. It's a way of life. You want the players to feel the same way about their Stability that a gambler feels about their dwindling stack of chips.

OK, that's Burn. What's Stakes?

It's described as a higher purpose, but honestly, it's a murky pool. Revenge is hardly a higher purpose, but it gets the job done. 

    Three Days of the Condor Trailer

This is the kind of mood you're striving for. Cut off, isolated, begging for help, not knowing which way to turn. Your enemy today may be your friend tomorrow. Because what matters isn't that the Station got hit, or who you're working with right now to get the job done. What matters is Why. Understand the Why, you appreciate the Stakes. Then you can act with purpose. Until then, you're flailing.

In Condor, the Why is information. What did the Station uncover to make it a worthy target for hired killers? In the scenario, the Why is also information, which you as Director can use to great effect. 

In this example, the McGuffin at the heart of the narrative is a letter from the vampire hunter Van Helsing. It can lead to a valuable artefact, Van Helsing's Case, complete with vampire hunting equipment. Acquiring that case is a turning point in the narrative. Until the agents retrieve it, their odds of success against the supernatural opponent are low. Not zero, but not good.

But the McGuffin also hints at other information: dead sons, dead relatives, tragedy, loss. It hints at the heart of the supernatural, while at the same time leading to a confrontation with the supernatural opponent.

The Why is with that supernatural opponent, and the information the players collect leads to that Why. The Why is the horror. Unless someone confronts it, many more might die. If the Conspiracy gets its way, thousands more may die. Dead sons, dead relatives, tragedy, loss. This is something you, as Director, need to make very clear. 

In Condor, this is made clear in two events. One is the opening moment when the Station gets hit. The other is when the Agency tries to bring Condor in, and it goes horribly wrong. Loss, followed by loss.

This is the essence of Stakes. Not so much that they exist, but that they are difficult to attain, and the cost is usually paid in blood. It's not enough that the agents are tough, experienced professionals. They need to lose and lose again. It's only through that loss they will begin to understand the Stakes. 

 

After all, without that motivator, what point is there in the game?

Twilight Zone

That's it for this week. Next week: something different!

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents - Stone Age Soundtracks

 

Stone Age Soundtracks (Channel 4, original concept Paul Deveraux)

The quality's not the best but I recommend watching the whole thing. I have mentioned this documentary before; it stuck with me.

Brief and inadequate summary: our ancestors discovered the power of ritual sound by accident, in ancient caves which they transformed into temples. They attempted to replicate the effect, with some success, in artificial environments - long barrows and similar megalithic sites. 

That's the core concept for the Node I contemplate coming up again and again in this campaign: the Ritual Site.

Before I said: 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales.

Omadios is a variant name for Dionysus, as in Dionysus the Raw-Eater. Sacrifices of flesh, usually thought to be human flesh. There's an old tale of Zagreus, son of Zeus, in which the child was butchered by Zeus' enemies and his flesh torn apart, devoured, some of it cooked. When Hermes discovered what had happened he informed Zeus, who destroyed the child's killers with divine thunderbolts. Zagreus' heart was the only thing that survived, and was later used to create Dionysus. 

From that myth our vampires are born, the Pentheus and the Maenad variants. They hear a sound, a song, that echoes through the ages. Some claim this sound is the echo of the Titans, the hideous creatures that tore apart infant Zagreus. That, if they can somehow make sense of it, the Titans will come again. Of course, this is coming from a group of creatures whose mental stability can best be described as Shaky, so take that with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it is what some of them work towards, even if in an indirect way. They are constantly looking for old ritual sites, so they can examine the design and use it in their own projects. 

This has been going on for a very long time. It's likely that some of those old, abandoned castles mentioned in the Dracula Dossier were ritual sites with their own sound chambers, once upon a time. That locations like Carfax or HMS Prosperine might have sound chambers, or that someone's been working on an old orphanage run by Heal the Children to turn its concrete corridors into a ritual location. Opportunities abound.   

Mechanically, something similar already exists within the Dracula Dossier setting: the Red Room.

The Red Room was a place of power for Dracula in London. Magically (or tellurically) designed to focus and amplify vampiric energies and wavelengths, he used it (or planned to use it) in 1894 to cement his hold over the high-society degenerates he recruited to his faction. Since then, Edom might have taken it over for their own purposes, or Dracula may have created another, or both. [p187 DD]

In that text the Room is a singular area in a specific place, with a variable power set. I'm proposing multiple Rooms in many areas, with one known power set (create vampires, under specific ritual conditions) and any number of unknown power sets. Not all of the Rooms work. Many or most probably don't work, or, if they do, they work in unexpected ways. Not even the vampires understand them, though there are some within the Conspiracy who claim they do. 

The perennial McGuffin in this situation is something I'm going to call the Instruction Manual. It might be a crumbling set of texts held in some forgotten monastery, translations of some Greek histories that go all the way back to Herodotus. It might be a transcript from the researches of the magician John Dee or some similar occult experimenter. It might be research notes from a Silicon Valley tech bro relying on the previous researches of a former Nazi, but whatever it is, it represents the most likely means of finding out how the Ritual is supposed to work. 

Everyone wants it. Factions within the Conspiracy - all of them a Pentheus variant - want it because they think it will help them create more Pentheus. The Maenad want it because they think it will create more Maenad. Other occult factions want it because they believe it will help them do X, whatever X may be. Immortality is a popular choice, but you do you. 

Meanwhile the various factions continue with their occult traditions, experiments, what-have-you, relying on the broken version of the Ritual that they think they understand, in hopes of getting what they want. This broken version sometimes does what it's supposed to but there are nearly always side effects, and most of the time it doesn't work at all. This may be because the Ritual site is contaminated or broken in some way, or it may be for some other reason. 

Note that in this version the Conspiracy has factions within factions working against each other. Broadly speaking, this is true of any organization. Regardless of the united front it presents to the world anything, whether it is a business, political party or other collective organization, has factions within it that want to promote X, whatever X is. Point being that, in this fictionalized example, those factions are hyperviolent blood drinkers who may or may not be insane.

The important thing to bear in mind, from a Director's perspective, is that this Conspiracy has one defined Goal: understand, and replicate, the Ritual which creates Vampires. Regardless of who's doing it, this is what they are doing. That gives this Conspiracy an end goal, whether they're in Turkey examining Neolithic sites, in Ireland digging up a megalith long barrow, or in some secret underground bunker in, say, Texas, surrounded by technology of dubious origin.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!    

 

Campaign Design Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes II

 ... I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind ...

OK, no storms forecast for this weekend so with a bit of luck I can finish this thought.

Duckman

I see this vampire divided into two types. 

The Pentheus is the planner, the organizer, the one trying to make sense of it all. They're the backbone of the Conspiracy. They accept their condition but are trying to prevent themselves sinking into madness. They don't really grasp the true nature of their condition because, if they did, they'd stop functioning. They see the others as a kind of Awful Warning. In a Dracula Dossier game, Dracula is the ultimate Pentheus, hanging onto sanity by the atoms on the tips of their fingernails.

The Maenads, on the other hand, are children of madness. They fulfil the commands of Dionysus, or at least that is what they say they do. They carry on a ritual whose purposes have long been forgotten. They have no idea if what they're doing is what they are supposed to do. They see themselves as driven by a higher power. Think of them as you would the Cthulhu Cult, except there is no Cthulhu, no promise of anything divine or beyond mortal understanding. Where they go, bloodshed follows. 

At the heart of it all is the Ritual, which is how you get more vampires. 

This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales. 

Now, in this degraded modern life, a sacred fane might as easily be a site of mass murder. A place where blood soaks the soil, perhaps because of a terrorist attack, or some other hideous deed. From this horror madness springs eternal, and a corpse left in this place, treated appropriately, might come to life once more. It might help if that corpse, in life, committed some atrocities, or shed their brother's blood, or, or, or ...

Because that is the horror of the Pentheus. They don't know how it works. They serve the Ritual in hope of getting more Pentheus to carry on the tradition, but when it comes right to it the vampires don't understand the whatever-it-is that made them so there's no way for them to reliably make more. Instead, they flock to places where tragedies happen, sometimes engineering events so that a tragedy happens, and all the while it could be a colossal flop. All that effort, and no vampire to show for it. Or, which is slightly worse from the Pentheus' POV, all that effort and only a Maenad to show for it. 

Meanwhile the Maenads flutter off like exploding butterflies. They have absolutely no self-control. They do not care what happens to them and they definitely do not care about other people. At all. A Maenad is driven by the song. They can hear it at the back of their minds. They might constantly hum it, or tunelessly sing it. A Maenad with some musical ability might perform it, but never perfectly, never the way they know it ought to be performed.

These creatures die off, but not before doing tremendous damage.

This kind of Conspiracy best resembles a terrorist organization. We think of these the same way we do organized armies. They have generals, officers, troops, a mission; they work towards a defined goal. This absolutely is not how these groups work in practice. Yes, there may well be a guiding brain - the Pentheus - out there somewhere, trying to make sense of all this. There may be schemes. There may be long-term plans. But the organization itself is as loosely structured as it is possible to be, because that's the only way it can survive and recruit. Everyone's hand is against it. It cannot afford the kind of structure an army has, because armies can be identified and met on the battlefield. This is, at its heart, a civilian organization. Destructured. Disorganized. 

Lethal.  

Next time: an RPG exploration of numinous sound and ritual locations, with a view to creating a new kind of Node.

Campaign Design - Night's Black Agents Burn Stakes

The mob has spoken!

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

SUPERNATURAL: Their markers are strange superstitions, often surrounding childbirth and burial customs; their emphasis is hunger. 

With an additional call for drunken Dionysiac vampires. Well. 

In a long-ago post about the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep I said:

In game, the protagonists are effectively the sons and daughters of Pentheus [tragic hero of the Greek play Bacchae]. Like the King of Thebes and the narrator of Lovecraft's short piece they too seek out the inner workings of the mystery ... The Crawling Chaos represents the reward all seekers into the mysteries ultimately receive: ignominious and pitiless destruction, not just of them, but of all their future hopes. Snakes and forgotten tram cars are their only monuments. Or, in RPG terms, a crumpled piece of paper with hasty erasure marks and repeated notches along the dwindling Sanity bar. Moreover none of them can claim innocence; ultimately this was what they wanted. Else why start on the journey in the first place?

    Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?

    Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.

    Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?

    Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-

    Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.

Let's talk OPFOR. 

In a Dionysiac chronicle, the ultimate mystery is the Maenad itself. It's not clear who they were or what they were up to, historically speaking. They frolic. They are intoxicated by the Divine. They speak in tongues and commit atrocities. Devotees of frenzy. They might commit terrible deeds in their own right, or they might call on Dionysius to torment and destroy their enemies. Either way, where they go, trouble follows. 

Dionysus itself is a peculiar creature. Sometimes called "the raging one" and "the mad one" they are known for pulling apart their enemies and, sometimes, putting them back together again. They delight in transforming; in one set of tales, after driving their enemies mad they turn them into bats. Forcing women to kill their children or their loved ones is a common theme in Dionysus tales. The best-known Dionysus story has Pentheus, the tragic hero, murdered by his own mother and sisters. 

He touched the wild
Cheek, crying: "Mother, it is I, thy child,
Thy Pentheus, born thee in Echîon's hall!
Have mercy, Mother! Let it not befall
Through sin of mine, that thou shouldst slay thy son!"
  But she, with lips a-foam and eyes that run
Like leaping fire, with thoughts that ne'er should be
On earth, possessed by Bacchios utterly,
Stays not nor hears. Round his left arm she put
Both hands, set hard against his side her foot,
Drew . . . and the shoulder severed!—Not by might
Of arm, but easily, as the God made light
Her hand's essay. And at the other side
Was Ino rending; and the torn flesh cried,
And on Autonoë pressed, and all the crowd
Of ravening arms. Yea, all the air was loud
With groans that faded into sobbing breath

 A chronicle of this type ought run red with blood, gore shed by those least expected. 

The main book uses the vukodklak as a supernatural vampire example and, broadly speaking, I'm going to use that as a stats template. 

When an evildoer dies unpunished and lays undiscovered for 40 days, he rises again as a vukodlak ...

With a few modifications. 

I'm going to drop the following powers as being unhelpful to the narrative:  Blight Crops, Tunneling (in rat form), Turn to Creature (rat, black eagle). Also the Compulsion Count Seeds. 

I'm going to replace with: Compulsion Tear An Opponent Apart, Powers: Strength, Venom (hallucinogen, through song rather that spit - think of it as an entrancing technique that causes riots), Summoning (particularly those it shares blood with or has drained blood from). 

I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind. 

***

OK, I'm going to cut this week's post short. Apologies! We had another massive storm that knocked out power over the weekend. I'm playing catch-up and have no time to finish this thought. Let's return to it next week ...

Campaign Design: Night's Black Agents - Which Way?

OK! First post in February comes with some tooting of the horn. I'm writing material for Pelgrane's Page XX which will appear at some nebulous point in the future. To give you an idea of what I'm working on:

New Fun

A Trail of Cthulhu scenario in which the investigators are tasked with finding a new comic talent for the funny papers.

The Giffard Auction

A Trail of Cthulhu scenario set provisionally in Lovecraft Country, in which the investigators are hired as protection for an auction bid.

Blood Cocaine

I’ll grind your bones to make my bread. [folktale, Jack & the Beanstalk]

A Night’s Black Agents Node which distributes Blood Cocaine and is linked to several smaller criminal syndicates which may or may not be part of the Conspiracy proper.

That's enough of that. 

Now, back in the Before Times I asked whether there was a campaign setting you'd like me to sketch out. There were several votes for different things, and more than a few asked for Night's Black Agents. Fine. That's February's project. 

It does lead to a question, though. Which flavor is your favorite?

As with most of the Gumshoe settings, NBA comes in several possible types and has the additional challenge of several possible adversaries. As a reminder:

BURN: In burn mode games, psychological damage is more intense; the actions Many of agents must take inevitably burn away their humanity. Your Stability is capped at 12 and degrades faster. Killing is never easy, and never free.

DUST: Recreate the gritty, lo-fi espionage world of Anthony Price or Charles McCarry, similar to the TV series The Sandbaggers or Rubicon, or films like Three Days of the Condor, by “de-powering” the game.  The vampires and their agents will be far more challenging and powerful in open combat.

MIRROR: In mirror mode games, your contacts and even your team are unreliable; your partners can help you with Trust or destroy you with Betrayal. Unlike the other modes, mirror mode games encourage player vs. player story lines or active conflict.

STAKES:  The characters derive their actions from a higher purpose than mere survival or “get the job done” ethics: patriotism, the search for knowledge, protection of the innocent, or even justified revenge. 

Meanwhile those pesky Vampires can be:

SUPERNATURAL: Their markers are strange superstitions, often surrounding childbirth and burial customs; their emphasis is hunger. 

DAMNED: Their markers are holy symbols and symbolism; their emphasis is seduction.

ALIEN: Their markers are various uncanny effects; their emphasis is invasion.

MUTANT: Their markers are medical symptoms; their emphasis is infection.

So! My question to the madding crowd: which, from this smorgasbord, would you like to see? Pick a setting type and an OPFOR type, and I shall go from there. 

To add to the mix, whichever campaign I sketch out will begin with this scenario from the Free RPG day collection: 

The Van Helsing Letter.   The player characters are about to obtain a letter from Van Helsing to the director of the hospital where his son died, a letter that hints at a (second) failed attempt by British intelligence to recruit Dracula as an intelligence asset. The clues in that century-old letter will lead the Agents to cross paths with modern-day minions of Dracula.

The weather's about to get very cold down here. Storms inspired by whatever-it-is happening in the States right now have impacted the island. If you'll excuse me, it's time to prepare for harsh weather and potential power outages. 

The Dark Side of the Opposition (BookHounds)

OK, we've discussed the Shop and the Neighborhood. The other thing the characters are going to be coming up against on a regular basis are the Opposition. Not the enemies of the campaign, necessarily, though that might be part of the problem. No, the point here is that there are rival groups, enemies, recurring faces which may not be part of the campaign's main problem but which complicate the characters' lives just by being there. 

The last time I spoke about this I said:

The big difference between antagonists like these and the band of orcs a bunch of murder hobos meet once, stab to death, and never think about again, is that these are recurring threats. Over the course of a campaign the investigators must expect to deal with these threats, but not necessarily defeat them.

It's useful to divide these antagonists into groups, as follows:

Minor Recurring (Normal)

Major Recurring (Normal)

Minor Recurring (Thematic)

Major Recurring (Thematic)

In any game the Minor players are going to outnumber the Major ones by a factor of at least two or three to one.

These are the folks, the things, the events, the rats in the walls which crop up again and again and again. They are as much part of the setting as the furniture and the floor. They are integral to the ongoing plot in that they reinforce the ongoing plot and provide opportunities for the players to gather resources and get support in their ongoing tasks. Or they frustrate the players by taking away those resources and support. 

Just as the neighborhood and the shop, they may have their Dark Side. 

That doesn't mean every fatberg in the sewage pipes below the shop comes straight from Cthulhu's nethers. Frankly, life would become boring if everything could be blamed on ol'squiddy. However, there always ought to be the possibility that these blocks, these stones, these worse than senseless things (knew they not Pompey?) have sinister ties. The players never ought to think 'this is harmless.' They ought to think 'this is probably harmless, but ...'  

The Recurring (Thematic) antagonists, by definition, have a touch of Mythos around them. Thus they have Dark Sides built in. 

Thematic ... differs from the Normal in that a Thematic antagonist reflects the Theme of the campaign. In Night's Black Agents the Thematic antagonists are the vampires, ghosts, Renfields and other damnable creatures of the night. In Call of Cthulhu the Thematic antagonists are cults, ghouls, Deep Ones and other elements of the Mythos. It's not simply that in a horror game you have horror things - it's that the antagonist fits the core activity of the setting. The Nodes and Mooks that work so well in Nights Black Agents are completely out of place in Cthulhu, just as Cthulhu is out of place in a slasher flick.

But that's not where I'm going today.

The Minor and Major Recurring (Normal) are, by and large, Normal. That's the point. But this is a horror game. Even the normal things in such a setting have the potential to be sinister. 

Let's take a closer look at Normal. Using the examples from last time:

Normal, Minor:

That One Weird Customer. Maybe it's the smell, his lack of respect for personal boundaries, or his obsession with a particular genre or author, but it drives the characters nuts. He just won't go away; perhaps he's protected by Mister Bourg, or perhaps he's rather more familiar with the locks and bolts on the doors than he ought to be.

The Water Pipes. They knock, they leak, they freeze, they burst. Nothing anyone can say to Mister Bourg gets the place re-plumbed; it's a maze of old pipes and patch repairs everywhere you look. Is your section flooded again? Better call the plumber.

The Rival Book Scout. How does he always get to the latest sale or trove of rare books before you do? Is the man psychic? Whether he is or isn't, he's the reason du Bourg's hasn't had a Windfall by now.

Normal, Major:

The Rival Store. It's not quite as old as du Bourg's and hasn't got its storied history. What it does have is staff that know what they're doing, premises that aren't crumbling to bits, and prices that are better than du Bourg's. Some of our oldest customers are being tempted away - and that has got to stop.

These are all antagonists, sure, They don't all have Dark Sides. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. But any one of them might have a Dark Side. 

The Hounds ought always be in doubt. 'Is it? Does it? Should I be worried?'

OK, fine. That's the threat. What's the action?

Well, in this case, it ought to be something that provides information as well as threat. In all the other instances the Dark Side has been a potential problem of one kind or another. A straightforward threat. But this is something that is, by definition, an antagonist. It already is a threat. Not a life threatening one, perhaps, but the characters already think of it as a kind of enemy. Adding threat on top of threat isn't interesting. It might raise the stakes, but that's it, and raised stakes aren't necessarily interesting. Thrilling, perhaps, but not interesting.

No, what's interesting is Information. Clues that lead to something. Clues that lead to Rome. Something mysterious about this particular Opposition figure gives the Hounds more information about the setting, the real threat, the Mythos hiding behind the curtain. In mechanical terms, uncovering the Dark Side of the Opposition ought to convey the equivalent of a 2-point Pool spend, and possibly other benefits as well, like 1 point of Mythos. Honestly, given the nature of the setting the Keeper probably should push out Mythos often and early. It's always useful, from a Keeper's perspective, to have one or two active characters in the game with points of Mythos to spend.

Should you assign this Dark Side to a particular Opposition figure?

No. 

Honestly, this is one thing you should leave up to Fate and the players. If you assign it to a particular Opposition figure, and the players decide they're not interested in that figure and won't engage with it. then it's work wasted. But if it's attached to something the players are interested in, it becomes more interesting, more valuable. It adds extra sparkle to the thing that, in their eyes, was already shiny.

But you should at least know what that Dark Side is, so you can plug it into whichever of the Minor/Major Opposition figures gets it. 

Mechanically I've discussed this in relation to Pool Points, which is a Gumshoe mechanic. That doesn't mean other systems can't use the same thing. The key is, they get information. All systems have information of one kind or another.  However, if I were using this in Bookhounds and wanted to assign a Dark Side to the Opposition, I'd describe it something like this:

Dark Side (2 point gain Academic or Technical Pool, potential 2-point Stability check, with a clue that leads to 1 point Mythos if the Hound follows it up. That peculiar smell? It just won't go away. There's something causing it. Under the floorboards? Behind the skirting board or the wainscoting? Or, if a person, hiding somewhere in their pockets? It would explain those insects which keep scuttling back and forth, the ones you haven't been able to identify in any entomology text. That said, you're certain you've seen something like it described in one of the esoteric tomes locked away in [INSERT LOCATION HERE]. If you could somehow get access to that text you might be able to figure out the mystery ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!