Trace. The agents must find something, possibly something that went missing long ago.
Uncover. The agents must uncover a mystery.
Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests.
It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons.
Clue
Much like Hunt and Rescue, Trace and Uncover share similar structure and, ultimately, have the same goal.
In both cases you, you lucky little blighter, are chasing after a McGuffin. The only real difference is whether that McGuffin has physicality or is more metaphorical in nature.
Let’s say you’re trying to Trace something in the present day. There are all kinds of ways that can happen. You can talk to people, you can use electronic tracking methods, you can consult timetables, shipping manifests, shippers, government bureaucrats – any possible source of information, really. Beware common mistakes. Is that number the right one, or was there a transposition? Do you have the right address?
All of this depends on a central premise: that there was a Thing to trace in the first place. Whether that Thing was a person, an object, or something else, it had physical presence and left a trail of information in its wake. Much like the Maltese Falcon it has a history and through that history you can find its current location – in theory, anyway.
Uncovering a mystery has basically the same principle, only this time the McGuffin you’re looking for may or may not be a Thing. It’s as likely to be a Fact. Who killed Colonel Bruce ‘Buff’ Orpington in the locked library of his Yorkshire manor house? Who stole the Muffinchops Diamond? What really happened at that secret meeting? Who betrayed Edom to Dracula back in the 1970s?
The key point being no matter whether you’re Tracing or Uncovering, you’re using the same base skill set to do it and finding the same kind of clues in the process.
It can be a very thinky adventure. Where a Hit or a Hunt implies some kind of action sequence, there’s no such implication here. You could do exactly as Holmes’ brother Mycroft and solve the entire thing from the comfort of your sitting room. You could do as Poirot does and carry out a little investigative fieldwork while allowing your grey cells to do the heavy lifting. Either method assumes that the investigator does most of the work with their mind, not their fists. I can’t think of a single Poirot, for example, where the detective actually engages in fisticuffs, never mind a gunfight. The TV show was a bit different in that it had to have an action scene, but it was nearly always a Chase of some kind that didn't involve Poirot directly. Even Holmes, for all his legendary baritsu, very rarely stoops to a physical altercation with his villains.
Which is great, if you’re into that kind of thing. It plays very well with Dust, and Mirrors. However, even die-hard Dust fanatics want someone to march into the room with a gun in their hand every once in a while.
Get Carter
Get Carter fits very well with this kind of paradigm. In a sense, it’s both an Uncover and a Trace. It starts as an Uncover and starts becoming more of a Trace once Carter realizes the true nature of the mystery he’s trying to Uncover. Plus, while there’s a fair amount of violence it’s more along the lines of a film noir than a James Bond.
One interesting variant on the theme could be Uncovering the mystery of what happened to the agents when they blacked out/were under the influence of hypnosis gas/were Renfielded. This uses basically the same premise as a Trace, except this time the agents are Tracing their own movements. What are those peculiar entries on my credit card statement? Did I really call Pizza Hut 20 times in 30 minutes? What the hell was I drinking?
Potentially this could cover years. If the agents were tools of the Conspiracy from, say, 2000 through to 2010, they’re going to want to know what they were up to in that period. There’s no reason why the Director should let them know everything after one scenario. There could be a mystery element, something that keeps popping up in the long-term narrative the same way Anthony Price uses Debreczen, the alleged school for spies in East Germany, in his 1970s/80s spy novels.
Incidentally I note that Anthony Price left us in 2019; when I wrote Dusting Off Price in 2013, I wasn’t sure what had happened to him. He was living in Blackheath and for a while there I was in Greenwich and knew Blackheath well. For all I know, I walked past him in the street.
Point being this could become long-term backstory for the agents, and the players. The Uncover, the Trace, don’t have to be single-shots. They can be something you return to again and again as the agents get closer to the source of the mystery.
Then, of course, there’s the bleedin’ obvious. Which is, that the search for Dracula in the Dracula Dossier is as much an Uncover and a Trace mission as it is anything. You’re trying to Trace an individual who leaves a trail – all those coffins and corpses – while at the same time Uncovering the mystery of who he really is, what his weaknesses are, and whether or not he can be killed with garlic pizza.
Even the novel has elements of Uncover and Trace. The heroes Trace Dracula's coffins and Trace his escape downriver to his castle; they Uncover his relationship with Renfield. However, the novel isn't entirely about Uncovering secrets and Tracing things, and there's a strong argument for saying your scenario shouldn't be, either.
Ultimately it will come down to you and your players as to which side of the fence you fall on, but this is one time you should think of scenario building in the same way you'd think of, say, cooking or chemistry: so many parts of this to so many parts of that. Two parts Trace to one part Uncover, that sort of thing.
Start with the solution and work backwards, says the Resource Guide, building a trail of clues that connects the initial hook to the final scene. Sound advice for both types of scenario.
All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus.
Let's use Uncle Albert. When I first described the Bankhaus I said:
Albert wants to keep Lisle happy, but it's possible that her continued mental domination has awakened certain desires in him that, until now, he's been able to suppress. He may have a collection of Lisle-a-likes kept at private apartments, or be a familiar figure at local BDSM establishments.
Let's say Uncle Albert is keeping a Lisle-a-like at a luxury apartment in Aarburg, a quiet little Swiss town with a lot of history. Picturesque. Touristy. Small.
Luxury Aarburg Apartment image sourced from Luxuryestate.com
The first order of business is to Trace the Lisle-a-like, presumably because she has well-connected friends who know how to reach out to people like the agents for help. Or, because agents of another vampire-related agency - Edom, say - are using the Lisle-a-like as an excuse to hire the agents, pretending to be concerned parents when in fact they're using the agents as disposable stalking horses.
The next question you want to ask yourself is how much Uncover, how much Trace? The agents will be Uncovering the mystery of why Albert wants to keep Lisle-a-likes, while at the same time Tracing the Lisle-a-like. I'd guesstimate about two parts Trace to one part Uncover, but it's up to you.
Ideally at the end of the scenario the agents know, or think they know, why Albert wants a Lisle-a-like - the Uncover - and they know where this Lisle-a-like is. Moreover, from this point they should have enough information to know where to look for the next bit of cheese in the maze. They should know about Albert's connection to Lisle, for example. They should know what kind of techniques Albert is using to create Lisle-a-likes, but not where he learned them, or (if specialist equipment is needed) where he's getting his toys.
Unless the agents have been particularly sneaky they also ought to have incurred at least one conspiracy reaction. Are the vampires tracing them? Attacking their allies, menacing their Solaces? That's because they dared Uncover the mystery, interfered with the proper workings of a Node, and brought the wrath of the undead on their vulnerable little Solaces.
What about the Reverse? Well, in this instance the agents aren't trying to find anything. They're pretending that they already have something, and they're daring the enemy to come get it.
Lovejoy TV show titles, starring Ian McShane
It's a grift, a big store or a short con, where the agents are Henry Gondorff and the conspiracy's people are Robert Shaw's Doyle Lonnegan.
Using the above as an example, if the agents were to abduct the current Lisle-a-like from her luxury apartment in Aarburg and then dangle her like a carrot in front of Uncle Albert, driving him to distraction and forcing him to chase after her, that would be a reversal of the Uncover/Trace. Now Albert's doing all the work and the agents are playing keep-away.
This runs the risk of being unplayable for the same reason that a reverse Sneak is unplayable; it's mechanically possible, but the NPCs are doing all the fun plot stuff. That's never a good position for the Director to be in.
However, a reverse Uncover/Sneak has one undeniable benefit: the agents are taking an active role, because they're the ones pretending either to be something they're not or to have something they don't have. They're the ones selling the big store, roping in the sucker and feeding him the convincer. Those are all active roles.
Let's say this pretense revolves around the Lisle-a-like's ex-lover sneaking back into her life as if she was Rapunzel and he (she?) the roguish prince come to rescue her from dolor. Then the reunited lovers rush off to, well, anywhere really, but let's keep it in Europe and say Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, for a skiing holiday. They might even have stolen some of Uncle Albert's cash to make that happen. It's actually all a ruse to lure Albert out of his place in the Node so the agents can do something nefarious, but if it works ... the payoff will be sweet indeed!
That's it for this week, and this series. Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment