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!