Idiots In Charge (Night's Black Agents)

When you put idiots in charge, expect stupidity.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, there’s a quote that has been attributed to several different people and which may be apocryphal, about German officers and their qualities. It goes like this:

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

This particular paradigm has put the stupid and industrious in charge.

You can make a career out of stupidity. Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels makes the bedrock assumption that a bunch of people with high security clearances had unprotected intercourse with the pooch and are now shitcanned to a dead letter office for spies. However, it’s not a career that allows for much upward growth. Which is the whole point of Slough House.

As vices go, though, you generally don’t expect people with high security clearances to demonstrate a great deal of incompetence. Ideally, if they were ever in the running for the top job, they would be competent and demonstrate that competence during their working career.

However, it sometimes happens that people, extremely stupid and incompetent people, are promoted to the top job. Perhaps it’s the old school tie. Perhaps it’s because they look good on television. The alcoholism or the bumbling is ignored for reasons that don’t really bear close scrutiny. Now the idiot has the corner office with the good view, and everyone has to wonder: when will this come to its logical end?

Let’s gamify this from two perspectives.

Let’s assume that Edom’s old CIA pals at Find Forever are led by an idiot.

Then let’s assume that someone in the Conspiracy is an idiot.

Remember what I said a while back about assets, powers and goals? Birds got ‘em, bee’s got ‘em, even educated fleas got em, and NPCs, nodes, are no different. That also applies to idiots, but let’s not think about idiots right now.

Let’s think about the people who work for idiots.

Each and every moron has a staff. Depending on the importance of the moron, they may have quite a substantial staff. This is important because staff counts toward the assets of the moron and bolster the moron’s power. 

However, the staff have something in common with the people of Czechoslovakia.

When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets in 1968, the newspaper Večerní Praha published “10 commandments”, writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know 2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to 6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do nothing.”

It's basic noncompliance. I bring this up because the staff of a moron are likely to be one of two types:

• Equally moronic, and therefore likely to follow the party line to the best of their ability.
• Noncompliant.

This will affect the capability of the moron in charge.

First let’s assume that the CIA Station Chief in London is a moron, in charge of the CIA’s assets and operations, and that Station Chief is briefed on Find Forever. Technically the CIA isn't supposed to be conducting active spying operations within a friendly nation like, say, running vampire assets in London. But technicalities have never stopped anyone before, and here we have someone who’s both stupid and industrious.

Someone who’s tasked with assisting Find Forever in their operations, by working with (or against) Edom to get access to their vampire, or the fabled Dossier.

It probably won’t take Edom long to work this out. Perhaps someone they know or someone in the public eye - the Journalist, let's say - is invited to the group chat, or perhaps someone leaves a laptop in the pub. There are all sorts of ways this can happen.

The question then becomes, what to do about it?

The most reasonable course of action, bearing in mind Edom can’t afford to antagonize the Americans, is to Flip someone or Reverse Trace something. That is, subvert someone on the moron’s staff, or cover up (Reverse Trace) the location of the Dossier, perhaps by creating a fake for the moron to go after. Edom doesn’t want to kill anyone. They just want the problem to go away.

However, this carries its own risks. If the moron decides to take things a little too far, people could die. Or operations could be blown.

Let’s say for the sake of this narrative that the CIA station chief becomes aware of something that Edom would rather not have general knowledge. The location of Ring, say, or the true identity of whoever-it-may-be currently kept at Proserpine. Then the CIA station chief promptly spills their guts and, in the process, alerts the Conspiracy to this vital knowledge.

Well, darn. Now the agents have to Defend that asset. All because the Find Forever guy is a thundering idiot.

This could turn into a miniseries worth of scenarios. What did Barney Fife of the CIA do this week? How will it make our lives worse?

Now let’s assume that someone high up in the Conspiracy is a thundering idiot.

Let’s say for the sake of it that the someone in question is dear old Uncle Albert of Bankhaus Klingemann.

Now, Albert is presumably good at his day job, or he wouldn’t have it. However, his day job is being a banker. That doesn’t mean he’s any good at anything else. He might be a complete idiot when it comes to, say, tradecraft, or interpersonal relationships, or any one of a dozen other things. Or he might be relatively sensible when sober but isn’t often sober. Dealer’s choice as to his particular issue.

However, if he has an issue, then he’s a threat to the Node in two ways.

First, he might authorize an Antagonist Reaction that’s completely inappropriate, or which gives away important information that the Conspiracy would prefer remain a mystery. Say, by using the zombie virus which the Conspiracy was saving for deployment a few months from now, thus giving the game away and giving the forces of Justice information with which they can invent a zombie vaccine. That kind of thing.

Second, his staff might become a little too ambitious when they realize they’re working for a cretin, because they want the cretin’s job. They might not know his job comes with Conspiracy strings attached. All they know is it comes with a corner office and a healthy pay bump, thank you very much.

This is where Czechoslovakia comes in, because staff like that are going to be very noncompliant to the higher-ups, but remarkably willing to cooperate with anyone who can get rid of the moron in charge. This lets the agents in on some of the Conspiracy’s best secrets.

Noncompliance means that the Node’s effectiveness is threatened.

Meanwhile, cooperation with the enemy comes with its own hazards. In this thought experiment the enemy doesn’t have to be the agents; there are any number of third-party agencies out there willing to do Bankhaus Klingemann a dirty turn. Say, Find Forever, or the Alraune. Or Carmilla. Again, dealer's choice as to who gets involved but somebody's bound to, once blood's in the water. 

Say that staff member reaches out to someone they think is reliable and that someone turns out to be the Alraune, who's been waiting for this opportunity. All of a sudden, the agents face a complication they didn't know existed, and all because dear old Uncle Albert is a cretin. 

Remember that old saw about having someone walk through the door with a gun in their hand. This opens up possibilities. Normally the door-walking so and so is a known quantity, but not this time. It could be absolutely anyone with a gun in their hand. All sorts of new clues can be sprinkled about the place in that situation. Which breeds plot, and plot is always to be encouraged.

Clue

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

OPFOR (RPG All)

'I feel like I still have a few questions about how to run the antagonist, particularly in its weaknesses and method of being defeated.'

OK, let's talk about the OPFOR.

While this question arose as a result of a particular scenario this response will cover all possible scenarios.

Like Nodes, any opposition has:

• Power appropriate to its function within the narrative.
• Goals, which may be personal or professional.
• Assets, which it uses to reach its Goals.

Depending on the system, any given enemy may have very explicit powers. Dungeons and Dragons is infamous for having very detailed notes on every conceivable monster type, to such an extent that I begin to wonder whether the average DM is a control freak with certain ... fetishes. GUMSHOE is a little more loosey-goosey, Call of Cthulhu and BRP in general leans towards the crunchy side of the power spectrum, and there are too many other systems to name in anything like detail.

The Goals, and the Assets, are ultimately up to the DM, but to a certain extent they can be inferred without having to break your brain. When discussing the Rule of 4, I said about the Rowdy Yates street gang that 'It's not reasonable to suppose a street gang made up primarily of loafers and lowlifes control the hidden secrets of the universe, or even the hidden secrets of the coffee machine down at Screamin' Beans Coffee House.' The same can be said of any OPFOR. 

A bad cop based in Los Angeles has some impact in Los Angeles. They have almost no interest or impact on what's going on in Berlin. Not even Berlin, Texas. A Dragon might be the terror of the kingdom; that doesn't mean that same Dragon has much impact or interest on what's going on in the Underdark. They might, but it's not nearly as likely as them having an impact on the nearby township, Snackington. 

Let's follow through on that logic and discuss some specific examples.

Let's say we're talking about a Deep One. Those are relatively common in Cthulhu tales. Not, mind you, a specific Deep One, a named character with a role in the narrative. No, for purposes of this example we're talking about the third Deep One from the left, carrying spear. 

Deep Ones have specific statistics, as follows:

Abilities (on land/in water): Athletics 8/12, Health 9, Scuffling 8/12, Weapons 6/4

Hit Threshold: 4/5

Alertness Modifier: +0/+1

Stealth Modifier: +0/+1

Weapon: +1 (claw), +1 (trident) 

Armor: -1 vs any (scales and skin)

Stability Loss: +0

Already you can put some ideas together. You can see that this creature is stronger than the average human (NPC) and can (with Health 9) absorb at least two or three solid hits without going down. That suggests it probably isn't afraid of attacking a single human. It might be cautious around two or three humans. There's a greater risk of them losing a fight. 

It knows it can be punched or stabbed without too much risk of fatal damage thanks to its armor. It probably also knows that firearms, especially heavy firearms, are a significant threat since the damage they do effectively negates any advantage it has through armor. 

Finally, it knows that it's punching above its weight. The average Deep One can inflict as much damage as a human armed with a heavy firearm. That suggests it expects to win most fights quickly, against the average human.

It also knows, thanks to its stats, that a Deep One can act on land and sea but is more powerful at sea. That might inform its decision making.

You, as DM, also know, thanks to its description, that it's as intelligent as a human, effectively immortal, driven to create more Deep Ones through intercourse with humans, and that it worships Cthulhu. The main Trail text gives several options for Cthulhu but I'm not going to get too deep into that pool, as the rules are about to be re-issued in a new edition. Just be aware that the Deep One is driven by these compulsions. 

With all that in mind:

• Powers: mostly physical. It can do damage. It's capable of tactical thinking and can use tools, which means it can ambush and set traps. However, the average Deep One is a team player, not a leader. It can follow instructions but might not be that good at issuing them.
• Goals: Spread worship. Spread infection. Survive. 
• Assets: other Deep Ones, human worshippers, potential access to Magic but that doesn't seem to be widely spread among them. Main asset is their personal strength and their increased ability when striking from the ocean.

When discussing scenario structure I said:

Crucially, you need to bear in mind that your structure isn’t some magical castle in the clouds that can only be reached by imagination wizards. Your structure is very simple. It starts with this:  

You put yourself in the characters’ shoes and ask yourself, if I had to answer this question, what would I do?

Exactly the same applies with OPFOR. What they do and how they do it isn't locked in some imaginary castle. You don't need psychic powers to work this out. You just put yourself in the Deep One's shoes and say, 'if I was dealing with this problem, what would I do?'

Deep One versus solo PC:

• I know I can beat this guy one-on-one, unless he has a gun.
• I should attack from ambush whenever possible. 
• If I beat him easily, I don't have to kill him straight away. I could capture him for sacrifice to my God.

Deep One versus multiple PCs, or one PC and multiple NPCs:

• I will lose if I try and fight this many.
• I should try to run away.
• If I can get more Deep Ones, or maybe some human allies, I can come back here and deal with this problem.

None of these are very complex plans and strategies, because this is third Deep One from left carrying spear. Unnamed monsters tend not to have complex motivations or significant assets at their disposal. If they did, they would not be third Deep One from left carrying spear. 

Let's say we were talking about something else. Let's say we were talking about Lisle Klingemann of Bankhaus Klingemann fame.  Since I've already described Lisle and her co-conspirator Albert Ahrens I know that each of them has at their disposal:

Secretaries, assistants, houses, cars, the company jet, and so on. The offices they command could also be considered assets, as well as the accounts they control. Each probably has at least one bodyguard. Lisle may have a hacker permanently on her payroll, to ensure that her constant drain of company funds, to fuel her gambling addiction, goes unnoticed. If Uncle Albert kidnaps Lisle-a-likes to populate his private dungeons, then he may have a kidnap team on the payroll. Each office will have some kind of security detail, probably sub-contracted, and while these won't be fully armed mercs they will be at least moderately competent. Finally, one or both of them may have sufficient criminal contacts to hire an outside hit man. All this is in addition to whatever muscle [they] can leverage from other, lesser Nodes.

So for Lisle it's reasonable to assume that she has:

• Powers, nothing too physical, but all the power money can buy, plus whatever power her vampire masters are willing to lend her.
• Goals: survive. Gamble. Serve vampire masters. Get one over on her hated brother Eric and her despised father, Joachim.
• Assets: all those named above plus whatever else she can buy, plus whatever her slave Albert can muster, plus any asset her vampire masters are willing to lend her. 

Lisle is capable of complex plans and strategies. She's a Node boss; she wouldn't be where she is if she wasn't a significant threat. However, her power is mostly soft power, the kind that comes with having lots of money and a ruthless streak. It would be unreasonable for her to get into a fistfight with a PC, not when she can pay half-a-dozen hard lads to do that for her.

However, she also has a weakness. She's a degenerate gambler. If the PCs learn about this, they might be able to manipulate or intimidate her.

Finally, she has goals that have nothing to do with the PCs or the ongoing vampire conspiracy. She feuds with her father and her brother. That means she might be persuaded or led to do something that the PCs want her to do, because it wins her some advantage in her ongoing feud.

Lisle versus solo PC:

• This clown is beneath me. 
• I should crush him with the power of money.
• Failing that, I should get one of my many minions to crush him with the power of crushing.

Accompanied by:

• I should be careful not to let my vampire masters down.
• When in doubt, survive to fight another day.

Lisle versus multiple PCs:

• How did this happen? Where are my guards?
• I should throw my toughest assets against these clowns.
• Where's that emergency asset my vampire masters gave me?

Accompanied by:

• I must survive.
• These clowns will pay for making me look weak.

Again, there's nothing here that can't be put together by asking one simple question: if I were Lisle, a rich, arrogant person used to getting my own way and crushing people with the power of money, what would I do in this situation?

That's it for this week. See you next week!

All Aboard The Techno Train (Night's Black Agents)

This week’s post is inspired by a recent Guardian article about Germany’s techno train running from Nuremberg’s Frankenstadion station to Nuremberg Central Station by a roundabout circuit. Each of its 25 cars is packed with DJs, dance spaces and happy party people. The whole thing runs twice yearly and is organized by nightclub Hauss 33. A kind of techno warp through the mountainsides of Bavaria, with the added advantage that you never have to leave; if you don’t want what’s happening in this carriage, you can always move to the next.

Sourced from Bilder.events

I’m no techno fan. Put me in one of those cars and I would have a very unhappy time. Even so, the idea of a scene taking place on the techno train is weirdly attractive!

Almost any of the NBA plot prods would do, but this strikes me as an excellent opportunity for any of the following:

• Flip. The agents must flip an asset to their side.
• Heist. The agents must steal something
• Hit. The agents must kill someone
• Hunt. The agents must find someone.
• Rescue. The agents must rescue someone.

The enclosed space, the remote environment, the probability that phones won’t work as well as expected or that the police/Edom/your aunty Mabel will not be able to intervene when needed – all those things add spice to the narrative.

Oddly enough this kind of thing has been done before in fiction, but not often. 

Jaime Lee Curtis’ Terror Train had a very similar premise. “You’re always walking out of my parties,” says the rich kid who booked a party train for his graduating class, “But this time you can’t.” The train doesn’t stop. It can’t stop. No matter how many pretty young things get carved up by the madman on board. You can’t really call it a techno train but all the German elements are there – dancing, live performances, private little nooks that you can be pulled into for ... fun times ...

As a scene location it’s evocative and has the advantage of being drenched in shadow and light, which means you can play with the players’ senses. In more ways than one; as the article points out it gets hot as hell on that techno train and the toilets will become a nightmare’s nightmare before the run’s over. God alone knows what the cleaners find when they go through the train after the run. Hercules and the Augean Stables aren’t in the same league. The smell! All that sweat boxed up in a small space …

You probably couldn’t set a whole scenario on the techno train; there just isn’t enough space, not enough stuff to do. But as a scene or a capstone moment, it works very well.

With all that in mind:

Uncle Albert's Pain Train

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 ...

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 ... 

The Agents become aware that Albert Ahrens is after another Lisle-a-like, who happens to be a DJ on the techno train. They also become aware that Albert's current Lisle-a-like is also aware, and none too pleased. Moreover, thanks to repeated injections of something unpleasant she has Renfield characteristics and a broken psyche. 

That's all without considering that Lisle, and the Conspiracy, know nothing about Albert's habits and would have a not-so-tiny fit if they found out. The Conspiracy would react violently; Lisle would rather cover everything up for the good of ... oh, the cause, why not. That's as good an excuse as any.

Option One: Flip It. The agents need to get to the DJ and convince her of the danger, thereby flipping her to the cause. She knows just enough about Albert's safe houses to get the agents in, allowing them a chance to confront Albert in one of his dens. Trouble is, that Lisle-a-like is also on the techno train and not only is she enough like the DJ to be mistaken for her (what with the flashing lights and all, though she lacks the tattoos so that might give her away) she has enough blood in her to power two tigers.

Option Two: Hit It. The agents don't need the DJ; they need the Lisle-a-like, and they know that the techno train is the best way to get to her. Try and ambush the Lisle-a-like anywhere else and she'll be dug in and ready to fight, but this is unfamiliar territory for her. Once dead, they can use clues found on the body to break into a Conspiracy facility.

Option Three: Rescue (?) The DJ is the target and, if the agents want the information in her head, they need to get her off the train. They think the Lisle-a-like is the threat and yes, she is in the area. That's not the problem. The problem is the Conspiracy is already on the hunt and the first sign may come when the agents find the Lisle-alike beheaded in one of the toilets. The Conspiracy wants to make a show to discourage anyone else from going rogue, and they don't mind if a few bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Note to the crowd: I will be in NYC for a week so there will be no post on the 17th June. Happy birthday to me and all that; I'll try not to spend too much on books (jk).

The Grey Man of Berlin (Night's Black Agents)

I'm going to draw on some information from the Dracula Dossier, Double Tap (ekimmu, the Babylonian possessing spirit p107-8) and this article about Beckett's Head, Berlin.

What came before: the German Vampire Project, pre-war, experimented with various necromantic techniques to create their supernatural crew and one of the less successful projects was Rattenfänger, which created one successful prototype but was unable to replicate its work. 

Its prototype, the Ekimmu that came to be known as Herr Flint, escaped the lab in the hectic last months of the Nazi regime. It survived the immediate inter-war years by making itself useful as a freelance operative serving the Americans, British and Russians; Herr Flint knew where the bodies were buried, literally and figuratively. It passed itself off as a low-level research assistant who just happened to know where the good stuff was kept, swapping information for security. Twice its cover was penetrated, and twice it faked its own death only to pop up again months or years later as an informant. 

When the Berlin Wall shot up Herr Flint saw an opportunity and, using the contacts it had made in the inter-war years, became an independent information broker between the living and the dead, whether Conspiracy dead or just regular. It wore out several bodies but accumulated a small fortune, as well as a significant amount of favors - currency, in the Cold War.

Recently Herr Flint decided to retire, after a close brush with permanent death thanks to the Mysterious Monseigneur. However, it's under pressure from a Conspiracy node, the Bankhaus Klingemann. Lisle wants Herr Flint to do one last favor for her, and as a substantial portion of Herr Flint's assets are held by the Bankhaus the Ekimmu finds Lisle's blandishments difficult to resist.

However, Herr Flint doesn't want to have anything to do with Lisle's schemes and has hit upon a solution: the Yojimbo option.

Enter the agents.

From the Guardian:

Beckett's Head is unmarked save for an eerily glowing photograph of Samuel Beckett in the window, so you'll need to ring a doorbell to gain access to this Prenzlauer Berg bar. Inside are two elegant, dimly lit rooms (one reserved for smokers) with low tables and chesterfield sofas. The comprehensive drinks list – ensconced between the pages of a Beckett tome – is divided into sections such as fresh and funky, and herbal and floral, and always features seasonal specials. The ice is hand-cut, and staff are happy to tailor-make drinks for the undecided. Absinthe fans may wish to sample the bar's take on the classic Monkey's Gland, made with English marmalade.

From Double Tap:

The ekimmu was a spirit of an unburied (or improperly buried) man that wanders the earth (or the underworld) bringing bad luck, disease, or a supernatural curse to its victims. Most often, the ekimmu possesses or attaches itself to a living victim, but some ekimmu animate corpses ... the ekimmu spends most of its time attached to or possessing a human or corpse, not least because (barring necromancy) it requires a human voice to interact with its Conspiracy colleagues. If it remains in the corpse too long, the skin shrinks over the bones and becomes pale or gray ... 

A Quiet Night Out

Information through the grapevine (tradecraft, streetwise or similar) suggests that important information concerning a Conspiracy operative is going to be traded in Berlin. One half of the deal is the infamous Grey Man of Berlin, but nobody knows who the buyer is. It might be interesting to find out ...

Opening

The agents pick up the Grey Man on the underground or U-Bahn, on his way to the meet. Surveillance is needed to avoid being spotted, and Sense Trouble notices a pair of disguised Bodyguards (p69 main book) following his every move. Herr Flint pretends not to notice these two, but he makes sure that they're never far away. 

The bodyguards look like a pair of students on a night out. Herr Flint looks like a bag of bones wrapped in an expensive suit. People on the U-Bahn avoid sitting near him if they can help it; he seems unwell. He has an expensive-seeming leather suitcase chained to his wrist. Anyone who pays him close attention also notices the gun he has in a concealed holster under his armpit. Agents with Law know that guns are heavily regulated in Germany; he's taking a big risk carrying something like that.

If the agents are spotted, Herr Flint tries to lose them by switching trains repeatedly on the U-Bahn (Difficulty 4 to keep up). It's a busy night and there are plenty of people trying to get home or to go out for a good time; a big crowd scene. If the bodyguards get an opportunity, they try to block the agents' path without seeming to do so deliberately.  

However, Herr Flint wants the agents to keep up with him so, if it looks like his attempt is successful, he'll deliberately sabotage it with an act of seeming carelessness. Clever agents with Sense Trouble may pick up on this deception and wonder why.

Agents who make a Sense Trouble Difficulty 5 notice that they're not the only suspicious characters on the U-Bahn tonight. A duo with special forces training (the agents may recognize them as members of the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State) are trailing Herr Flint and have identified the agents as potential threats. If the agents recognize them, it raises a question: what are the Vatican's people doing quite so far from their turf?

Agents who pay close attention to the Vatican's people see them conferring every so often with what can only be surveillance assistance somewhere off-site. So there are more of them out there somewhere.

Arrival at Beckett's Head.

This cosy high-end cocktail bar is the sort of place anyone with High Society might start an entertaining evening, and tonight a group of execs from Bankhaus Klingemann are enjoying the finer things in life. Among the group is Lisle, the queen bee, holding court. They're in the smoking section, which (tonight only) is marked off for a private party.

Agents with Vampirology or Occult may notice that Herr Flint reacts badly to Lisle's bright red dress; the color red is a Dread for his kind.

Herr Flint takes up a spot at one end of the non-smoking section, enjoying a herbal cocktail. His bodyguards, who saunter in after him if they're still in it, are not far away. 

The Vatican group take up observation outside the Beckett's Head. The agents may notice a nondescript van parked not far away; the Mysterious Monseigneur or one of his senior henchmen is paying close attention from that observation post. Meanwhile the two special ops types the agents may have seen from before work their way around to a back entrance; they expect Herr Flint to make his way there and are planning to hit him when he does. 

Herr Flint is toying with a chess problem and using a board in the bar to play it out. He's paying it close attention. What he's not paying attention to is his leather case, which is by his side, unchained. 

Lisle saunters over and pretends to be interested in the problem as well, as is one of her inebriated colleagues. Though Herr Flint isn't too happy about her choice of costume he accepts her interest with polite decorum.

The inebriated colleague wanders off in search of the bathroom, but not before picking up the leather case. His instructions are to check the goods and, if satisfactory, leave Beckett's Head. If unsatisfactory, he rejoins the party.

That's what Herr Flint was hoping for. As an Ekimmu he has a special ability: when wounded his blood becomes an aerosol phantom that takes the shape of a predatory bird or storm cloud. He booby-trapped the case with a blood bomb; the colleague sets it off as soon as he opens the case. Herr Flint used 5 of his Health to make the phantom, which is one of the reasons why he looked so unhealthy tonight.

The first the agents may know about this is when the blood bomb goes off and the Bankhaus Klingemann exec comes stumbling out, drained dry by the blood phantom and breathing his last. While this distraction is going on, Herr Flint collapses. 

Except not really. Herr Flint has decided the time has come for a change of body. He had intended to take Lisle but she protected herself by wearing red. Now he has to choose someone else.

His options, in descending order: the agents, the Vatican agents, a Bankhaus employee at the party, some random civilian.

Meanwhile his bodyguards, not realizing his deception, leap to the defense of their principal. 

Thus starts a three-way melee. Herr Flint's bodyguards are almost innocent bystanders in all this and are armed with non-lethal weaponry, but they are a complicating factor. The blood phantom is immaterial and is partly controlled by Herr Flint, but it lacks a motivating force and is basically draining everything it can. The Vatican's people will intervene as soon as they realize what's going on, but that will take a few combat rounds. Meanwhile Lisle, who has a bodyguard of her own at the party who doesn't believe in non-lethal weaponry, will first try to get hold of the briefcase and then, when she realizes it's a scam, make her exit.

Herr Flint's objective is to find a new body and get out.

The Vatican's objective is to put an end to Herr Flint once and for all, and they have the Banes to do it but lack a target - at least until they find out which body Herr Flint now operates from. 

Lisle and Bankhaus' objective was to get hold of the data Herr Flint promised them. Once they realize the data is a sham, their next objective is to get hold of Herr Flint.

Once Herr Flint has a new body he'll move outside, where he has a fast motorcycle stashed not far from Beckett's Head. This may provoke a Chase scene, as Herr Flint makes his getaway. 

Herr Flint has a safe house luxury apartment in Berlin where he'll stay the night and, if he isn't tracked down, he'll leave Berlin soon after in his new body. The Grey Man lives to fight another day ...

Interesting footnote: Prenzlauer Berg has been a center of youth counterculture and squats that, today, is undergoing gentrification. The old hippies are being squeezed out, but it's still a youth-trending neighborhood. Added to that, there are any number of WWII era bunkers under Berlin, including Prenzlauer Berg. You're spoilt for choice: that safe house could be in one of the few bits of Prenzlauer Berg that hasn't succumbed to gentrification, daubed with Cold-War era graffiti, or it could be in a lost Nazi bunker beneath Prenzlauer Berg. Either way, an excellent and evocative spot for a final showdown!

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

   

Let's Uncover and Trace a Secret (Night's Black Agents)

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!  

  

Let's Sneak (Night's Black Agents)

Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location. 

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. 

Sourced from Themes and Titles

Unless your players are dead inside, this is the mission they dreamt of when they signed up.  

Maybe they saw themselves as James Bond, Jimmy Ocean or Jason Bourne. Maybe they imagined using cunning disguises and trickery, or perhaps, as Bond memorably did in the Goldfinger opening sequence, they pictured themselves swimming past enemy defenses with a fake seagull on their heads.   

Regardless of the icon they pick for themselves, this is the iconic spy moment. The agents’ time to shine. 

Or the moment where it all goes a bit Pete Tong and the agents have to run for their lives.  

Either way, it’s Thrilling. 

Perhaps the best thing about a Sneak is that it involves a number of skill sets which in turn means that everyone will have a chance to shine. The Digital Intrusion specialist, the driver, the con artist, the B&E sneak machine, they all have potential spotlight moments. 

Perhaps the worst thing about a Sneak is that involves more work on the Director’s end than most other operations. Think about it: you have to prep a number of different options to get in, set varying Difficulty numbers depending on how and where the agents try to infiltrate the system, and have different options available for that inevitable moment when the agents exfiltrate, under fire or cool as ice, depending. This is the one time the players will want to see, if not detailed maps and sketches, at least some imagery of the target. This is the one time the Director will need detailed OPFOR on hand for the agents to bounce off of.  It’s tactical. It’s strategic. It’s sneaky. 

Sneakers, sourced from Rotten Tomatoes

There aren’t many films that rely on infiltration and sneaking as the main meat of the narrative. Part of, yes. I can’t think of a single Bond film that didn’t involve a Sneak scene of some kind. However, it’s usually only a fraction of the whole story.  Sneakers is the exception, and well worth seeking out if you haven't already seen it.

Going back to the Planning, Execution and Aftermath formula the Sneak scenario is unusual in that, for once, you’ll be spending most of your time in the Execution phase. The whole reason why a Sneak scenario is Thrilling is because you get to Sneak in. It’s the visceral moment when you’re standing somewhere you know you shouldn’t be, doing things you know you shouldn’t be doing. Everyone everywhere has had that moment in their lives, at least once. Yes, the Planning is important, and yes, the Aftermath probably has a Chase of some kind because really, why not? Baby Driver was almost entirely a Chase scene from the opening sequence, and it was brilliant.   

But the meat here is that sensation of bliss when you have crossed the Rubicon and are ankle-deep in potential shit, and whether or not that shit remains potential or becomes as literal as Shrodinger’s Cat will depend on whether or not you raise the alarm. 

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of Sneak scenarios. 

• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. You are attempting to sneak into a heavily guarded facility which will react with lethal force should you screw this up. You’ve seen that film a thousand thousand times. 
• Climbing the Matterhorn. You are attempting to sneak into an area in which most of the obstacles are environmental. General Wolfe scaling the cliffs of Abraham, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn & David Niven crossing ocean and climbing cliff faces to blow up the Guns of Navarone, that sort of thing. 
• Danny Ocean’s Dream Job. There may or may not be lethal force at the site; that’s not the challenge. The challenge is to get in, and out, without anybody knowing you were there. They might find out later. That’s fine. By the time later rolls around you’ll be on a beach in the Maldives. Any number of con games play out this way, and there’s often a switcharoo scene or possibly a cackle bladder. This is the version that will almost certainly call for a Preparedness test at some point. 

There’s one additional wrinkle to bear in mind that I’m going to call the Money Heist twist. In that narrative, the problem isn’t Sneaking in. You get in however you like. No, the problem in this scenario is Sneaking out again, without anyone realizing what you’re doing until it’s far too late. This twist will almost always be a Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you, as Director, can make Sneaking out, rather than Sneaking in, the meat of the scenario. 

Money Heist Bella Ciao, sourced from Ένας αγέρας

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

Let’s say this time out that the target is one of the Bankhaus’ East Asia holdings, a mining operation in South Korea close to the North Korean DMZ. The agents have reason to believe that the Conspiracy is using it for nefarious purposes, though what those purposes are remain unclear. 

This means that the Preparation part of the scenario will involve a fair amount of scout work, both to see what kind of operation the Conspiracy is running and what kind of OPFOR the agents can expect. 

Given that the Conspiracy’s operation is probably pretending to be something it isn’t, the first layer of this onion will involve working out what it actually is. That means the agents will be keeping tabs on who goes in and out, what appears to be going on down there, and whether there are any unusual defenses or outbuildings. Are they using a lot of electricity and therefore throwing off a lot of heat? Do high ranking government officials turn up at unusual times? Is that mysterious visitor the renowned physicist Benjamin Sun-Kee, and if it is then what is he doing here? Why are all those trucks coming and going – refrigerated trucks, not your standard cargo hauler? 

Then comes the actual Sneak. 

If it’s Kiss Kiss, then the operation plays out much as any one of a dozen different thrillers. The agents get in and get out under the noses of any number of heavily armed guards. Combat is possible, perhaps even likely, so as Director you need to prep some armed OPFOR.  This sequence is very likely to end in a Chase of some kind, so as Director you need to be prepared for that as well. 

If it’s Environmental, then the agents are trying to get in via a route that seems impossible which is why it’s not as heavily guarded as the other ways in. The cliffs at the Plains of Abraham were so steep it was thought impossible for an entire army to scale them, therefore the French didn’t pay as close attention to them, which is why Wolfe and his men took the French by surprise. So you’re looking at some kind of environmental hazard significant enough to pose a challenge. Fording a raging river, climbing a steep cliff, or walking through the DMZ all qualify as environmental challenges – some more than others.  

If it’s Danny Ocean’s Dream Job then the agents are going to be relying on infiltration, disguise, bluff and meticulous timing to get in and out without anybody knowing what they’re up to. Exactly how they do this is up to them. Perhaps they do as Danny Ocean did and hide one of the team in a special delivery so that they can open the way for the rest. Perhaps they pretend to be delegates from another Node conducting a surprise inspection. They could even pretend to be vampires, to cow the gullible human guards into submission. Whatever works, but the key here is that the burden is very much on the players who will, by their actions, be deciding how difficult this becomes. Don’t worry too much about that. In this, as with all things, the players are usually their own worst enemy. 

Then, of course, they have to get out again … 

OK, so what about the Reversal?

Well, this is the one time I'm not sure there is a Reversal. 

Technically there is: the agents can defend a location against someone else's Sneak attempt. Which ... I mean, it's doable, but it does mean that the NPCs will be doing most of the Thrilling stuff while the agents are on the sidelines playing keep-away. You could look at it as a kind of Dead By Daylight scenario where the agents are the Killer trying to keep the survivors from turning on the generators, and that kinda works, but if the NPCs get the spotlight moments while the agents get hosed, not by their own actions or even enemy actions but by the situation itself, you have to wonder whether that's a game you want to play.  

Also, I can't help but think this is bound to become a very talky session as the players pore over maps and schematics arguing about the best way to defend against an attack, all the while ignoring their Preparedness pools. Or, at the other extreme, it becomes a game entirely about Preparedness pools while the Director reverses the improv principles and turns it into a 'yes, but' scenario. Lots of dice rolls, not much action. Either way, dull and frustrating for all concerned.

No, it may be better in this instance to have this as a classic Whodunnit mystery. In this situation the agents come on the scene after the Sneak attempt has already successfully taken place. The NPCs got away with the McGuffin. The question is, who were they? Followed closely by, where are they now? Do they still have the stuff and, if not, who does?

The obvious plotline here is the theft of the legendary Dracula Dossier, but really it could be any kind of McGuffin so long as the agents and NPCs all agree that it's valuable stuff.

That’s it for this week! Enjoy.   

Let's Hit a Target (Night's Black Agents)

Hit. The agents must kill someone 

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. 

Day of the Jackal (1973)

Wetwork is one of the go-to plots for spy stories. It has drama, action, and an exciting goal. Added to that, there’s a wide range of options: will you opt for poison, a knife in the dark, a sniper’s bullet – or are explosive endings more to your taste?  

James Bond had to carry out two assassinations without a hitch before claiming the coveted 00 designation.  He did the first with a sniper attack, while the second was a much more up-close and personal approach. The Jackal, consummate professional, took on the assassination of Charles De Gaulle and intended to get him with a mercury-tipped sniper round at a distance of about 400 yards. Meanwhile Jason Bourne, inspiration for the Brainwashed Black-Ops Badass build, is a close combat specialist who dropped out of the program after a failed assassination in which he had to hide aboard a private yacht for five days to get close enough to the target to do the deed. Jason Statham’s Mechanic specializes in deaths that look like accidents, and goes to great lengths to make that happen. 

A Hit has a few things in common with Heists, in that the narrative is mostly about the Planning and the Aftermath, less about the Execution. As a general rule you want to make sure that your narrative is Thrilling, and it can be difficult to make the Planning stages of a Hit Thrilling. That’s doubly so if the agent’s intended hit strategy involves sitting at a distance of 400 yards and putting an explosive bullet between someone’s ears.  

No, for it to be Thrilling there needs to be stakes, action, consequences, and for that it’s worth going back to the Jackal – with a touch of Jason Statham’s Mechanic. 

In those stories it’s not about the moment when a finger tightens on a trigger. It’s about how difficult it is to get to a point where you can pull a trigger. In the Jackal the narrative is ultimately about the Jackal’s tortuous progress across France to reach a certain point at a certain time, and how often he comes close to being exposed or caught. In mechanical terms, the entire novel is an Extended Heat chase with the prize at the end being a President’s head.  

Mechanic: Ressurection (2016)

Statham’s Mechanic operates in very similar circumstances but the thrill is never in the kill itself. It’s in the climb across a skyscraper’s front to get to a point where he can make the kill. The narrative is almost entirely prologue with the sudden release of … water … being the climactic moment. Again, in mechanical terms the scene is an extended Thrilling Infiltration, to get to a point where the Bang-and-Burner’s prepackaged toy can do the most good. 

The actual killing takes seconds. It’s the minutes you spend getting to the point where you can kill that makes a Hit a Hit.   

In an RPG narrative you also have the option of the escape plan, which is usually hinted at in novels and movies but rarely becomes a significant part of the story. A Jackal may say that the ability to get away with it is all-important, and it is to him as a character, but it’s not important to the story of The Day of the Jackal. Similarly Statham’s Mechanic may get away without a scratch despite impossible odds, but the movie doesn’t spend much time showing you how he does it. What’s important is that he does it. 

Whereas an RPG story has the option of making the Aftermath the meat of the story, because the Aftermath can be Thrilling. It will definitely involve some kind of chase moment in the immediate aftermath of the Hit, and may involve a significant Extended Heat chase across the geopolitical landscape. This probably works best in Dust and Mirrors games, where betrayal and murky allegiances are paramount. However, it’s possible – and might be a lot of fun – to start the story with the target of the Hit collapsing in a welter of blood, and your agents then have to somehow get away with it. 

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Marathon Man (1976)

The Three Days of the Condor is almost entirely an Aftermath narrative; there is a Hit at the beginning, and the protagonist has to deal with the consequences. The Boys From Brazil starts with a series of Hits, after which the protagonists have to unravel the complicated series of events that got to that point and discover the real reason for the Hits.  Marathon Man has a similar dynamic, with slightly more time spent in the Planning stage.  

All these are Dust narratives but they have one other thing in common: the protagonists of those stories aren’t the ones carrying out the Hit. They’re the ones that have to live with the consequences. This is because all these stories, and Dust narratives in general, are morality tales, and it’s difficult to make a killer the hero of a morality tale. A hero of a thriller, sure; but someone who pulls the trigger from 400 yards away is, at best, morally dubious.  

In that sense a Dust tale inherits the Noir mantle. Noirs are often morality tales as well, and the protagonist usually ends up getting martyred. 

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

There are all kinds of targets here. Lisle and Albert are the obvious ones, but really anyone sufficiently interesting and plot-relevant can be the target. Or it could be a more crooked narrative where the subject of the Hit leads to the real Objective of the mission. Say, a crime carried out in such a way that it looks as if Lisle or Albert must be the killer. 

It’s generally the case in stories like these that the difficulty of getting to the target and carrying out the Hit provides the Thrills of the story. It’s one thing to smother someone in their sleep, something else to creep through a small army of guards, deactivate the alarm system, avoid the attack dogs and then smother someone in their sleep. That’s what makes Hitman’s Agent 47 the top of his class; not that he knows how to use a pillow, but that he can get to a point where the pillow is useful. 

So to spike the difficulty the Hit either has to take place in a difficult location, or be surrounded by difficult safeguards, or both. It’s not enough to get the door key; you need a biometric key set to one particular person’s keyprint. It’s not enough to walk into the nightclub; you need to get into the VIP lounge, and from there into the hidden VIP lounge. That’s not just a bodyguard, it’s a Renfielded rhoid-rage bodyguard with more points in Martial Arts than six Jackie Chans combined. 

Let’s say that the target is Lisle and that, for plot reasons, the Hit has to take place at an exclusive sex club in Berlin to throw suspicion on Albert. That knocks off two Node head honchos in one fell swoop. It has to look as if Albert did it and that means he can’t have an easily provided alibi, so timing is critical. It can look like a murder but it has to be his murder, and that means unless he’s suddenly discovered his inner Schwarzenegger it can’t be an overtly violent hand-to-hand killing. Poison, bullet, knife in the back, all these methods are on the table, but not something that would require more strength or skill than Albert has. Plus, if Albert is left-handed, say, better make sure you use your left hand too. Let’s also say that in order for this to work Lisle’s partner for the evening has to be distracted, so they don’t become an unexpected witness to something unpleasant. 

That’s a lot of moving parts, so there’s plenty of things for a team of agents to do. Someone has to keep Albert busy, someone else has to keep Lisle’s partner busy, there’s Infiltration, there’s probably also Digital Intrusion (either to control the security cameras or to wipe the records – perhaps both), all of which has to be timed perfectly which means someone has to be coordinating the whole thing. Not an easy job.   

What happens when we flip a Hit and make it so the story has to be about preventing a killing?

The trick there is, a lot of the things that make a scenario Thrilling happen to the killer, not the people trying to stop him. The hero of the Day of the Jackal is policeman Claude Lebel, but you wouldn't know it from the film and you barely know it from the novel, though I doubt that was author Forsythe's intent. It's just that the Jackal does all the eye-catching action-centric stuff. Claude makes a ton of phone calls and reports on the regular to the authorities in charge of the case, but in terms of directly affecting the narrative Claude has no role at all, except at the end.

Sherlock Holmes has a better option. His antagonist Colonel Moran is a sniper and game hunter without peer, who carries out his hits with an air-powered rifle that kills with a lead bullet, not a million miles away from the Jackal's bolt-action rifle with its mercury-tipped bullets. The idea being accuracy, plus an exceptionally lethal payload.

Holmes pulls it off by making himself the target and ambushing Moran - and no, that's not a spoiler, it's a Holmes story. If you haven't worked out that Holmes (nearly) always wins by now, you never will. It's a bit like expecting a Bond villain to triumph. The minute Bond steps into the ring the only question is how the villain will lose, not when or if. Make it so the agents aren't reacting to someone else's action but are themselves taking action, and the narrative becomes Thrilling again.

So in a reverse Hit story your best bet is to allow the agents to be the targets, either because they willingly put a target on their backs or because this is a Conspyramid reaction to something the agents did. Pit them against the best of the best. That way the narrative becomes personal, and if you're doing your job right the agents will become deeply paranoid.  Channel your inner Mike Pondsmith. Make them check under the bed and avoid all windows. If they can't bear to drink anything other than bottled water on the off-chance you've poisoned the martinis, you've done your job well.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Let's Plan a Heist (Night's Black Agents)

Heist. The agents must steal something

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.

The League of Gentlemen (Criterion)

A heist plot is about the planning, execution and aftermath of one large robbery and most heist films tend to spend more time on the planning and aftermath than they do the execution. 

Not that the execution isn’t fun. It’s often the most thrilling part, but in terms of time spent on screen the execution is perhaps 10% of the runtime. The balance is spent on planning and aftermath.

How much is spent where will depend on the kind of story told. In The Asphalt Jungle, a significant chunk of the screen time is devoted to the aftermath because the narrative is noir, and the whole point of noir is the characters not the action. Usually, the aftermath is about the characters’ death spiral or some similar gloomy end state. But the aftermath is where the meaty character drama is hiding, so that’s where the plot spends most of its time. A Dust or Mirrors game will probably follow this pattern.

Whereas a thriller narrative spends the majority of its time on the planning because the planning stage is where the thrills are. The League of Gentleman follows this pattern; the vast majority of its screen time is spent gathering, training and equipping the heist crew. The actual heist is perhaps a few minutes long, and the rest of the film – all twelve minutes of it - is its aftermath. A Stakes game the best fit for a thriller narrative.

One of the tricks of this particular genre is the gathering of necessary materials, effectively a pre-heist before the main event. This plot device assumes there is a species of McGuffin that’s needed before the characters can forge ahead and take the main McGuffin. It almost doesn’t matter what this is; it might be plans, materials, getaway vehicles, but whatever it may be it’s vital to the success of the operation.

In The League of Gentlemen, the bandits need equipment they can only get from the military. Being ex-military themselves they opt to disguise themselves as soldiers, sneak onto a base and steal everything they need right under the garrison’s noses.

In Night’s Black Agents the Preparedness ability is sometimes used to skip past all this on the assumption that the actual breaking-and-entering is the main event. It can be, but it’s just as much fun to play through the various bits of pre-heist preparation so long as the pre-heist involves action of some kind. 

If it’s just sitting in a smoke-filled room drawing sketches on the back of a beer mat, don’t bother. If it’s about breaking into the prestigious offices of a world-renowned architectural firm to steal the plans of the vault, or whatever it may be, then go for it.

The shorthand is this: if you can develop a Thrilling version of the pre-heist, whether that means Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, Interrogation or similar, then run the pre-heist. If there’s no way to make the pre-heist Thrilling, then hand-wave with Preparedness.

Much the same principle can be applied to the aftermath. The Italian Job spends little time on the heist itself, but the final moments of the film – the bits that everyone who’s ever seen it remembers – is the aftermath. That’s not because the Italian Job is a psychological character study. Nobody ever hired Michael Caine because he could act; they hired Michael Caine because he looked good on film. The aftermath of the Italian Job is one extended Thrilling Chase sequence followed by what can best be described as a typical British triumph.

From your perspective as Director, play through the aftermath if one of two things apply:

• Either you can make it Thrilling, or
• You’re playing a Mirror game and now’s the time for the grand betrayal.

The final point to bear in mind is this: it doesn’t matter what’s in the safe you’re trying to crack. The audience doesn’t care. What the audience – the players – cares about is getting into the safe and getting away with the loot. So long as you make that process interesting it doesn’t matter whether the agents are getting away with millions of dollars in Nazi gold, the plans of the fort, or the contents of Donald Trump’s closet at Mar-a-Lago. What matters is the planning and the aftermath, not the whatever-it-was they stole.

With all this in mind, let’s go to the Bankhaus.

Bankhaus Klingemann has offices in Paris and Zürich. Let’s say the target is the Bankhaus’ offices in Paris, near the Place de l'Étoile aka Place Charles de Gaulle. Even if your players don’t know Paris all that well it’s a pretty good bet they’ll recognize the Place de l'Étoile, as it’s been in so many films. 

This is something you should be striving for. Make the heist location a character in its own right. It can be as fantastic as a Transylvanian castle or an alien spaceship, as historic as the city center of Milan or as Dusty as a racetrack while the horses are running. What matters is, the location is always larger than life. It's a place the agents want to spend a little time in - at least long enough to clean out the safe.

Let’s add a couple layers of difficulty and say that this heist has to go undetected for at least 24 hours after the heist, and that it has to take place within a relatively short time window. Say, between the hours of 4pm to 4.30 pm, Friday evening. It doesn’t matter why; adding extra layers of difficulty ups the challenge which in turn ups the Thrilling aspects of the heist. Maybe Lisle is in the middle of a meeting and can't be disturbed. Maybe there's some kind of supernatural conjunction, or a change in the guard patrol or what-have-you. The thrills are what matter; everything else is gravy.

Already you’ve got a visible, memorable location and the added pressure of special conditions. That’s vital. It’s not enough to be thrilling; you have to be Thrilling. Making it take place in a memorable location helps the players cement the action in their minds. 

Now, the final step: add an unexpected dilemma. 

The size and scale of the dilemma will depend on what kind of game you're playing. Dust and Mirrors games can have dilemmas which either are small scale or seem small scale at first glance. The League of Gentlemen has a moment like this during the heist planning phase, when a policeman unexpectedly calls at the (fake) garage they've set up to build the heist cars they need. The policeman pounds a regular beat, this garage is on his beat, and as it's new to him he stops by to introduce himself and chat to the owner. Simple. Explicable. Exactly the kind of thing that might happen, but because it's a policeman calling at the one place the Gentlemen would rather he didn't call, it's a problem.

Whereas a Stakes game by default plays big, wild and dramatic. A mere policeman stopping by isn't anything like the scale or noise of a Stakes game. This is the kind of thing you might see in a Grand Theft Auto Let's Play, where some rando is dashing down the street on foot with a five-star rating. This is when you hear sirens.

 American Heist

The exact nature of the dilemma will depend on the specifics of your campaign. This is where you want to tailor a specific challenge to meet agents' Drives or test their specialties. If someone is an ace Driver, this is when the Thrilling Chase plays out, and so on. If someone's Drive is Atonement, this is where you put that moment of truth where their sin can be expiated. Or made infinitely worse ...

Let's say that the Heist in this specific example is at the offices of Bankhaus Klingemann near the Place de l'Étoile and the heist has to take place between 4pm to 4.30 pm, Friday evening because that's when Lisle is out of the picture and your agents are trying to manufacture a scenario in which Albert suspects Lisle of being in on the heist. If Lisle can't explain her whereabouts, that creates a problem for Lisle which your agents can exploit. It doesn't matter really what the McGuffin is; what matters is where it is and when it can be had.

As a complication let's say that the Conspiracy has sent an unscheduled audit team to Paris to check the Bankhaus' books, and the head of audit is a Renfield. The agents will have to be clever or sneaky to get past the audit team and grab the goods.

Let's further say that because of the audit team the McGuffin isn't where the agents thought it was. Lisle moved it, or changed the locks, because she didn't want the audit team finding it. It's still at the same location, but it's more challenging to get. That ups the Difficulty of any tests to get at the McGuffin. 

OK, that's what happens in a Heist. What about the reverse?

Well, the Reverse is challenging. A Heist has three components: the planning stage, the actual heist, and the aftermath. The agents are trying to prevent the heist or catch the heist crew.

By default the planning stage takes place off-stage. The NPCs are doing all the planning and the agents don't know what they're up to; at this point they may not know the NPCs exist. So that's not when the scenario starts, from your players' perspectives. 

That means your options are to step in during the Heist, or in the Aftermath.

If this is during the Heist then it's either going to be a kind of counter-infiltration scenario where your agents are caught in the building as the enemy breaks in - a Die Hard situation - or the agents arrive just in time to bottle the enemy up in the building and the scenario becomes a hostage negotiation problem.

Both have their merits, but it might be more interesting to play this as an aftermath or Munich situation. The awful thing has already taken place. The agents now have to track the perpetrators across the planet and find out what they were hoping to accomplish, or who they were working for.

In theory you could play an entire campaign this way, each session being about another target, then another. "We found three more names ..."

The Dracula Dossier has the most obvious McGuffin for this moment, the Dossier itself. It's gone missing, Edom will pay a fortune to get it back. and the agents are either freelancers chasing a dream or employees of one of the shadowy espionage groups interested in knowing what the Dossier contains.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Let's Play A Game (Night's Black Agents)

Roundabout p. 187 of the NBA main book Ken Hite starts talking about possible scenarios, and gives nine active scenario examples:

•     Destroy. The agents must destroy the local conspiracy apparat.
•     Flip. The agents must flip an asset to their side.
•     Heist. The agents must steal something
•     Hit. The agents must kill someone
•     Hunt. The agents must find someone.
•     Rescue. The agents must rescue someone.
•     Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location.
•     Trace. The agents must find something, possibly something that went missing long ago.
•     Uncover. The agents must uncover a mystery.

Each scenario type can be reversed so a Destroy operation can become a Protect operation in which the agents have to defend something of theirs against enemy action.

I thought it might be interesting to discuss each operation in turn, using Bankhaus Klingemann of Bonn as the subject in each case. The Bankhaus is a Node I've developed before and if you're interested in knowing more about it I recommend the previous post. 

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.

Let's talk Destroy.

Destroy assumes that the target has something that can be blown up, burnt down or otherwise wiped out, preferably in an impressive display of pyrotechnics. It also assumes that people are going to die or be ruined in some way, either because they end up in jail for a very long time or are otherwise taken off the board and put in a position where they can't return. 

Sony Pictures

Often this involves some kind of Infiltration. This may be an Infiltration in plain sight where the agents have to get access to, say, the Embassy Party by pretending to be guests and wait staff, or it can be the more usual kind of infiltration where the agents sneak in under cover of darkness.

It usually doesn't involve psychological or mystery tropes. As a rule, a Destroy scenario has a clear objective which has an identifiable value. It may be a bogus objective - your princess is in another castle - but the agents know at the start that the objective exists and can be found. 

It doesn't have to involve outright violence. Bond's Casino Royale is basically a Destroy scenario in which Bond is tasked with beating Le Chiffre at Baccarat, because Le Chiffre has been embezzling from his bosses and it's hoped that if Bond wipes him out the bosses will wipe out Le Chiffre. This works so long as your agents enjoy the kind of specialist play that the scenario demands. Thrilling Infiltration, say, or Thrilling Digital Intrusion. 

Double agents often provide spice to the narrative; in Navarone one of the team is revealed to be working for the enemy. This is problematic for the Director. Either one of the players has to be the double agent, which is fine up to a point but can cause group conflict out of game as well as in it, or one of the NPCs has to be the double. You can't over-use this idea, or the agents will distrust every single NPC they come across. It works best in Mirror-style games where the idea of betrayal is baked in.

Apply the Rule of Four to this and all scenario types. Four characteristics of this Destroy scenario which you can bring into play at any time. More than four and you will start to lose track.

Kreis 1:  Albert Ahrens has a home in Zürich's old town which he's kept carefully off the company books. He's owned it for more than thirty years and there are some dire secrets buried under those floorboards, secrets that he'd do anything to keep out of the light of day. Not least of which is his latest Lisle-a-like, who's undergoing psychological torture so she can better fill her role. Her predecessor is one of the things buried under the floorboards.

Slush Fund: Lisle keeps a special fund for her frequent, illicit trips to casinos. It's hidden under the company books as a special investment fund, the Raptors, and each Raptor holds the debts of the previous Raptor on its books as assets. Currently there are more Raptors than even the company accountants can keep track of and one of these days a whistleblower will make hay with them. Lisle isn't as clever about money as she thinks she is; she relies on bluff and a reputation for financial infallibility to keep the Raptors off the radar. 

Project Achilles: The Bankhaus is deeply vested in a French software development company, a start-up with a stellar reputation but not - yet - much in the way of product. The jewel in the crown is something called Project Achilles, a new kind of vulnerability testing software specifically designed to defend against resource stealing. It's garnered a lot of attention and several governments are thinking of buying into it. The firm, Kube Group, has its main offices in Paris with representation in Monaco, but for some reason it has a satellite installation in Rome - nobody knows why.

Tracfin: Allegedly the Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financiers clandestins, France's intelligence service dedicated to defending against money laundering, is interested in the Bankhaus. This isn't exactly news; Tracfin is interested in pretty much everything that goes on in the financial world. What isn't nearly as widely known is that Lisle has infiltrated Tracfin and is using it against her company's rivals. Lisle's contact within Tracfin, senior investigator Claude Leroy, is rapidly becoming a Renfield and is Conspiracy-knowledgeable but doesn't have a way in other than through Lisle. Leroy can use Law and Heat to make life very difficult for the agents, and if necessary can brand them as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers to get the heavy mob involved.

With those Four Things the agents have at least two potential avenues of attack. They can ruin either Lisle or Albert by exposing their secrets, or they can Destroy valuable assets by going after the Kube Group's assets in Paris or that mysterious satellite in Rome. Any of these targets could weaken the Node if they were taken out. Meanwhile in addition to any resources the Node might have in its own right it also has that willing stooge at Tracfin who can up the agent's Heat or get the heavy mob involved, perfectly legally. All this is before any supernatural assets get in on the action.

Potential scenario locations include Paris and Zürich with a side trip to Rome or Monaco, if the agents feel like it. As Director you'd want to at least have a surface understanding of all those locations - nothing fancy, just a quick-and-dirty. 

The agents get to pick for themselves exactly how they Destroy the target. 

Now, let's flip this over and look at it as a Protect scenario. What exactly are the agents protecting from Bankhaus Klingemann?

They could be protecting allies within the French government or software development or the financial sector. The Bankhaus would be interested in Destroying any of these and have the tools to do so. Alternatively, the agents could have allies or assets within the Bankhaus or Kube Project itself that need protecting. After all, Lisle has an interfering brother who might be a crucial asset, or there could be a whistleblower in Kube Group providing valuable intel about that mysterious project in Rome.

The Four Things remain exactly the same. The difference is, if the agents go after any of these Four Things it's not to Destroy them necessarily; it's to Protect whatever asset needs defending. So the Kube Group insider, let's say, is Protected when Uncle Albert has to deflect attention from that peculiar house of his, or Lisle has to hide her gambling debts. Perhaps Lisle's brother Eric will breathe easier when Claude Leroy is out of the way. 

In any event the point I'm getting at is this: the terrain does not change whether it's a Destroy or Protect operation. What changes is the objective. Which means you can re-use the same terrain as a Protect scenario even if it was written as a Destroy scenario, if there's reason for you to do so.

This is something you should always strive for no matter what system you're writing for. Never kill yourself with work, particularly if it's the kind of work that nobody but you will ever see. Instead make sure that the scene, asset, or whatever it may be, can be used multiple ways for multiple reasons.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.