I'm off for the next two weeks. Should be the last time this year, thank heaven.
This is going to be a brief one, inspired by the recent case of an alleged Saudi spy caught bugging a Silicon Valley AI firm.
Short version: MIT grad and new dad Abdulrahman Alfozan was caught trying to retrieve/replace a small bugging device he'd placed in a conference room at OpenAI, the firm that created ChatGPT.
There's a picture floating around that's too good not to share, posted by Justice:
That's Alfozan, caught trying to retrieve the device from the TV USB port it had been placed in.
The alleged spy used his wife's Chat GPT account to get the instructions to build the surveillance device. The presumption is he intended to hand over whatever data he collected to the Saudi government, though at time of writing none of this has been proved.
Honestly, if true, it makes you wonder just how stupid the average MIT grad is.
Let's gamify this.
In Dracula Dossier there are several Edom establishments that might be espionage targets. Ring, Seward's Asylum, potentially Proserpine. That's before you consider that there might be outside British tech firms working with Edom, and any number of university science departments.
The Saudis are nominal allies of the US, though they may not be feeling so friendly at the moment. Israel is a nominal ally of the UK and has already, thorough Prince, established connections to Edom.
From this:
In Plain Sight
Edom has cause to believe that someone has planted a bug at one of its establishments (pick the one you like best) and sets up a sting operation to catch the spy. Your agents are either tasked with running this sting (if Edom) or with extracting the alleged spy (if working against Edom).
The spy is an Israeli, Aviel Malka, who was recently brought on board by Prince. The idea was that Malka would conduct research on the potential uses of AI clients in Edom. The unofficial presumption was that Malka, like Prince, had links to Unit 8200, though this was never confirmed. Malka is young, married, and his assignment is due to come to a close within a month. He'd return home once the assignment completed.
The surveillance device is a small electronic bug inserted into a USB port in one of the many, many bits of tech scattered about Edom's establishment. Edom already knows where and what it is. Steps have been taken to disable it, so the spy will return to retrieve it.
What nobody realizes is that Malka used his wife's AI client to design the device, and he did that because his wife is Renfielded and is secretly running the show for the Conspiracy. It's the Conspiracy using the Malka family for its own ends; the agents, if working against Edom, think that they're operating on behalf of a more-or-less benign third party; the Mysterious Monseigneur, say.
Potential Thrilling Chase; potential Thrilling Digital Intrusion.
The bigger question, if the agents are Edom, is did Prince know about this? Is Prince working secretly for Israel? Or is this an attempt to blacken Prince's name by whoever's running Malka?
For reasons I shan't go into I have to do a lot of house clearance over the next couple of months.
This is on top of needing to make a trip to the UK for family reasons, so my life is full right now.
The house clearance means I need to make a bunch of dump runs, and those go a little like this:
For that section of garbage that can't go into the usual Monday collection, you take it down to the dump yourself. You can pay someone else to do it. I don't want to pay money for anything other than furniture or stuff that won't go in the car. But it does mean a lot of dump runs for, say, old electronics, clothes the charity shop won't take, books that are too badly damaged or uninteresting to go to the charity shops, and so on.
The dump is way on the unattractive side of town. I could say it's the bad side, but that implies it's crime-ridden, and it's not. It's just too close to the incinerator, which means it's constantly under threat of ash, particularly if the wind is going the wrong way. In a place like Bermuda, where everything's supposed to be perfect, that's not great, and don't forget we get our drinking water from rainwater collection off the roof. There's all kinds of reasons why you might not want to live close to the dump.
The dump's a communal experience. Everyone goes there at some point. Doesn't matter where you are in society's food chain; someday there's going to be something you want rid of, and this is where it goes. There's a scattering of things on the kerb that someone left out in case someone wanted it. Art, usually. The rest goes into one of four bins, unless it's a car battery, which goes to one side. The whole shebang is presided over by a grotesquerie that someone put up in the way-back-when, a half-life size doll of a cricketer with a bat. You drive in, you dump, you move on. It opens every day at 7am come rain come shine, unless it's Christmas. I'm probably going to make several dump runs this week. I have to go to town anyway. It makes sense.
RPG settings tend not to spend a lot of time considering trash, which is a shame, since garbage disposal is a big part of living in a community. Arkham is the one I think of. I've not yet read the more recent version; basing this on Arkham Unveiled, item 1005:
Most of Arkham's trash and garbage end up northwest of Meadow Hill, in a big excavated pit. At night the place is infested with raccoons, skunks, opossums, and an occasional black bear.
Which is fine so far as it goes but doesn't spend a lot of time on what makes it a dump or what happens when the dump gets too big for its britches. It spends at least half the description on wild animals which might be found there.
In period, Arkham, like Bermuda, probably spends a lot of effort not throwing things away. Things are expensive. Difficult to get. Often in short supply. You don't chuck things unless you have to. Furniture, clothing, these are things you repair.
Unless there's a compelling reason to get rid of it.
Dump Run
Your borrowed flivver is laden with things that absolutely will not keep and you've been tasked with taking it to the dump.
Some of Arkham's poorest are already there when you get there, picking through the discarded, seeing what can be salvaged. There's a policeman here too, which isn't usual. You recall an article in the Gazette about fights breaking out over scraps. That's probably why he's here.
Among other things you see, by the side of the road, a trio of paintings. This happens from time to time. The rich in the artist's colony take a disliking to something they've made and, rather than salvage the canvas (or, in some cases, the frame) they leave it here. Perhaps someone takes it. Perhaps not.
One of the paintings catches your eye. Is it:
Option One: The Seascape A battered fishing trawler limps back into port just ahead of a storm. It's a third-rate Expressionist piece, dimly reminiscent of film poster paintings. The Expressionist style makes it hard to make out details, but there's something hiding in the water. Perhaps several somethings. Humanoid? Difficult to tell, but they have eyes. Lots of eyes. SAN 1/1D3, and the viewer sees this in their dreams for a week. Longer, if they retrieve the painting and take it home with them. Anyone who does take it home becomes very interesting to Deep Ones, who pursue the picture owner trying to get the painting from them.
Option Two: The Landscape An exercise in social realism, this piece shows a city street in Arkham. Probably Northside, not too far from the Asylum and the Common. There are three figures clustered round a cart, a fruitseller, the only human figures in the piece. Otherwise the street is peculiarly vacant. You'd swear you know that street, but you can't quite place it. You must have walked through it or past it a hundred times. SAN 1/1D3, and if someone takes this piece home with them then they can find this street. Otherwise its existence preys on their mind, but they can't find it. If they do find this street, the fruitseller has something very peculiar for sale ...
Option Three: The Dreamscape An odd architectural section in the Bahaus style, someone's deconstruction of an older Arkham townhouse. If this is the early 1920s then Bahaus is virtually unknown in the US, making its peculiar use of colors and severe exactitude challenging to identify. The townhouse seems familiar, but the viewer can't quite place it. The effect is something like a 20th century genie in an 18th century bottle. SAN 1/1D3, and if the viewer takes this painting home they discover that their house, wherever or whatever it may be, becomes the townhouse in the painting, after dark. After midnight, footsteps can be heard. Someone is pacing the corridors of the house of dream.
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.
