The Man In The Middle (RPG All)

This post comes courtesy of Dorothy Sayers and the Armitage Files.

I've been rereading Sayers over these last few weeks. She's a remarkable talent with a very human writing style. Her views are not mine, to put it candidly, and there are times I have to grit my teeth and bear it, particularly when she starts talking about Jews or any non-white character. Yet she has a knack of showing (not telling) what makes people, people, and that's what draws me in. 

I've also just finished an Armitage Files game, and became intrigued by the setting only to realize I had a copy but had never read it. So I waited until the last remnants of humanity had gone up in a puff of ashes, and then downloaded the .pdf from my Pelgrane shelf. 

The Sayers I've been reading most recently is Murder Must Advertise, in which her aristo sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey puts off the ermine and pretends to be an ordinary citizen in order to infiltrate an advertising agency. He does this because he has reason to believe that someone in the agency is neck-deep in crime, and murdered a fellow employee to keep their nefarious doings secret. 

It turns out this particular nogoodnik is a mere cog in a larger machine, a man in the middle trying to stay afloat in choppy waters. It occurs to me that characters like this get short shrift in most games, which is a shame.

Take Orlando, for instance, whose machinations in the first season of HBO's The Wire kicks off one of the major plotlines of that season.

Orlando's entire value to the organization he works for is that he's a clean face, with no record. He exists, and gets paid, to do nothing but be honest and run a nightclub. Doing nothing is boring, so Orlando wants to get into the game, sell a little narcotics on the side. 

It's that little itch, greed, cupidity, that gets him deep in trouble. 

The Armitage Files, and for that matter the Dracula Dossier and a host of other games, are all about conspiracies and, by extension, organizations. Nothing gets done by doing nothing. If you want to take over the world, you're going to need help. Sure, this means you hire a lot of people with guns, magical knowledge, what-have-you. Troops. Mooks.

It also means you hire a lot of middle men. Honest fronts. Cogs in the machine.

To borrow a line from Bioshock, somebody's got to scrub the toilets. There are jobs that need to get done, bribes that must be paid, ongoing deals that need to be managed which by their nature don't need some necromancer or armed thug in charge. If your criminal organization owns a restaurant for whatever reason - to launder money, to prepare cannibal feasts, whatever it may be - someone's name has to be on the lease and liquor license. 

In the Wire, Orlando is that middle man. The club is a front for a criminal group, but the club still has to appear honest. So they need someone like Orlando. 

In your occult-tinged spy thriller, apocalypse drama, or cold war witch hunt (with real witches), your conspiracy is going to need an Orlando too. Someone who appears honest because they are honest. They're paid to be honest. Being a bland-faced stooge is their whole deal.

In the Armitage Files, much like Night's Black Agents and some of the Pelgrane titles that come after it, NPCs are multipurpose. They might be Stalwart, which means they're against the dark powers that threaten to consume the world. They might be Sinister, which means they're working with those same dark powers to bring about the apocalypse. Or they might be Innocuous - exactly as honest and naïve as they seem. 

I propose this: even if they are Innocuous, that doesn't mean they're Innocent. They could be Middle Men. They don't realize that the messages they pass on every other month are actually related to a sinister conspiracy. That the newspaper clippings they've been told to collect are some kind of occult code. That the purchases they make on behalf of their benefactor are actually helping to bring about the End of the World.

Further, like Orlando, they may not understand that the things they do to benefit themselves - like branching out into a new line of business - might anger their backer. Until it's too late, of course.

I don't want to use any of the Armitage Files NPCs as an example, as that might spoil something for someone. Ditto Dracula Dossier. However, Double Tap has some useful Cameos that won't spoil anything for anyone, so let's have a shot at the Building Superintendent.

Branko

Conceal 3, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 2

It’s not that Branko is a bad man, he’s just apathetic. Always wearing a stained sweat suit, unshaven, and reeking of  Gitanes and cheap slivovitz, his building slowly falls apart around him. But he’s been super in this building for a while, and he’s seen the neighborhood change … and not for the better. (Cop Talk, Intimidation, Negotiation)

At this point I could detail his role as a Sinister or Stalwart character. Maybe the occultist up in the penthouse seems like a Crowley-esque supervillain, but Branko down in the basement is the one holding the strings. Basically, a Casablanca set-up except Sam's the one who really own's Rick's. Or maybe Branko's operating a one-man war against vampires, and his super's office is stocked full of Banes and Blocks. 

However, that's not Branko's role today. 

No, Branko is a Middle Man. That means he's exactly as Innocuous as he seems, but he has his uses and the powers that be are manipulating him, for whatever reason. It could be something relatively simple. His name's on a lease, or he's signatory to a bank account that is of interest to the Conspiracy. But it's more fun to play with the set dressing.

Let's say that this is a Night's Black Agents game with Supernatural (or Damned) vampires, and that this particular game has a significant occult element. Branko might be getting an extra something every week to maintain a shrine out in the graveyard, or to bottle ghosts and deliver those bottles to the empty apartment up on the second floor, or to buy a particular foreign language newspaper and cut out all the obituaries, pinning them to a notice board in the apartment house lobby. Branko doesn't know what he's really doing. He's just going where he's told to go, wave a seemingly harmless bottle around for a few minutes, put a stopper in it and bring the bottle to somewhere that as far as Branko knows is normal.

Of course, if he gets bored one day and doesn't bother to wave the bottle around as he was told, but just sticks a stopper in it and takes it up to the empty apartment, that could lead to unfortunate consequences for all concerned. Especially Branko. 

Or, let's say Branko gets to talking with some nice, plausible player characters and they ask him what he's doing. He has no reason to hide. He tells them everything. He even lets them come along and watch as he waves the bottles around in that spooky alleyway he was told to go to. It's all a big game to Branko. 

It's not a game to the Conspiracy. 

In Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, the murderer is also a middle man. This middle man is effectively a messenger, passing on information about narcotics shipments. He knows, roughly, what he's doing and why, but he needs the money. 

This is a little different from Branko, in that Branko might not know what he's about. Branko might be a complete stooge. Murder Must Advertise uses a different kind of middle man, someone who understands what's at stake and may not like what he's become, but is too far gone to do anything about it. 

Orlando in the Wire is in a similar predicament. He knows exactly what's going on, but boredom and hubris get him into trouble. He could have kept making easy money and that would have been fine for everyone - but no. He wants what he can't have.

Using Branko again, let's say that Branko is that kind of middle man. In that case, he's not going to be talking to plausible agents, not unless they can guarantee him immunity from prosecution. He's still as Innocuous as he seems, but he's just too compromised to be entirely comfortable in his role. 

As to what he's up to, well ... let's say that the apartment on the second floor is used by Conspiracy operatives as a killing floor. They lure targets back to the apartment and butcher them, taking the bodies somewhere else to be dumped. 

Branko isn't directly involved either in the lure or the corpse clean-up. However, the Conspiracy pays him a stipend every month to keep an eye on the apartment and report back to them if the cops, or anyone else, starts poking around. Maybe he's been asked to deep clean the place a few times. Maybe he's had to find a new bed mattress after the old one got ... stained. Or throw some shoes and dresses into the building's furnace.

So now Branko knows more than is good for him. He doesn't have the full picture, but what he does know could get him into a lot of trouble and he's scared. 

Technically that leans more towards the Sinister side of the ledger, but Sinister carries with it the implicit assumption that the NPC will take action against the PCs if threatened or given adequate cause. That's not a middle man's role. No, a Branko will fold under pressure. He won't harm anyone. He's the guy who, in the Interrogation scene, says 'you don't understand. They'll kill me if I talk!' Then, just as he's about to spill his guts ... blam! Bullet to the head. Or explosive device, or what-have-you.

Middle man = walking, talking, Clue. Possibly a Core Clue, but in any case destined for a bad end. With Stability losses for all concerned.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!