Go See This Now - Heists, Crime, Horror, Food & Booze (Netflix)

I've been bingeing these, and you should too.

La Casa de Papel is brilliant, intelligent, meticulously plotted, with some incredible set pieces and a climax to set your teeth on edge. Eight small-time crooks break into the Royal Mint of Spain, but they get caught halfway through the heist and are besieged for over a week. Except it wasn't really a heist, and the siege is all part of the plan. Night's Black Agents directors and players need to have this in their lives. Why am I singing its praises again? Because Season Three is coming soon, and it would be a terrible, terrible shame not to see the first two seasons before Three's July debut.

The Bar, another Spanish shocker from cult director Alejandro de la Iglesia, is a much more claustrophobic comic horror piece. A group of strangers are trapped in a small hole-in-the-wall boozer, when a mad gunman opens fire. One customer's dropped with a headshot, and everyone wonders who's next to get got. But wait! Why are the streets completely deserted? Was it really some crazed sniper, or is this all part of some government plot? Standout performance award goes to Jaime Ordonez as Israel, who spends the entire film chewing the scenery and spitting chunks of it all over the floor.

Unit 42 is a Belgian cop drama, about cyber crimes. Widower and father of three Sam Leroy is parachuted in as the new head of the unit, and must find his feet while keeping his fractious team focused on their job. For once, a police procedural that doesn't treat computer crime like some alien sci-fi looney bin, though it does wear its sci-fi credentials proudly. Hence 42, as in the Meaning of Life. I like that it remembers corpses stink, and aren't pleasant to look at. The first season touches on Anonymous, ISIS and other topics ripped from the headlines, but never buries itself in bullshit. YouTube only has an English dub trailer and several non-subbed French trailers, and I shan't inflict the English dub on you.

I like it best for its subtle character details. Example: the boss' boss, a character who only appears occasionally, keeps goldfish and plants in her office. She's absolutely fatal, black thumb personified, and everything she touches dies. In another series there'd be long speeches about her inability. In this, we just see her harried expression as she brings another container of dead goldfish to the toilet for a solemn burial.

Again, highly recommended to Night's Black Agents Directors and players alike.

Charite At War is a second world war epic, about the Charite Hospital in Berlin. The doctors, nurses and patients have to survive a city under siege, threatened by aerial bombardment, Russians at the door, and cornered Nazis making a final stand. The narrative starts in 1943 and goes to the end of the war, all in six episodes. Fair warning: eugenics and experimentation on children both feature significantly.

I like it best for its characters, but I was struck by its intelligent use of wartime footage to flesh out its world. Every so often you'd see brief glimpses of Berlin as it was, then Berlin as it became, after the bombs dropped. It made the narrative much larger, even compelling.

Tokyo Stories: Midnight Diner is my chillax series. When the day's gone on too long, it's always a pleasure to sink back into this cheerful, slice-of-life narrative. Each day, after midnight, the Diner opens, for people who can't bear to go home. The Master has a limited menu, but offers to cook anything his customers want, so long as he has the ingredients. The Diner becomes a story hub, as each of the customers take it in turn to have some kind of crisis, which can only be solved at the Diner's counter. Slightly saccharine and very Japanese, in the same way that Studio Ghibli films are very Japanese; nostalgic, elegiac, sentimental.

Plus, free recipe with every episode. Can't beat that!

Finally, Office, a Korean horror film from 2015. Family man Kim Byong-gook goes to the office day in, day out, never deviating, never relaxing. One day he murders his entire family, then disappears. Where did he go? Why did he do it? Why do security cameras record him going back to the office one more time, but there's no footage of him leaving?

Freaky as hell, very psychological. Winner of the 2015 Camera d'Or at Cannes. I'm not saying much about it because I don't want to spoil, but trust me when I say, it delivers the goods in the craziest way imaginable.

Enjoy!

Playing with Real Toys: Abandoned Orient Express Trains, Belgium (GUMSHOE Modern)

There was a time when Orient Express meant luxury, mystery, and romance. Those days aren't quite gone, but the train in these pictures has seen better days. Abandoned somewhere in a Belgian train yard, these old carriages and locomotive have been quietly rusting away for many years. Lost and forgotten things have many stories to tell - so what can we do with this one?

A quick note on ownership: the photos shown here were obtained via Urban Ghosts and the blog Rebecca Bathory. I understand Urban Ghosts obtained at least some of its images from another user, blogging at PreciousDecay. To my knowledge, those are the original sources of the images.

For those who aren't familiar with Georges Nagelmackers' pride and joy, a brief history.

The state of train travel in Europe during the Victorian era was lamentable. Functional, yes, but where was the style? The panache? Meanwhile, across the water, American George Mortimer Pullman was showing how it could be done: luxury travel, in a carriage fit for a king, not the knock-crack-smash in a wooden box that everyone had become used to. 

This inspired many innovators, including Belgian Georges Nagelmackers, who founded the Wagons-Lits Company in 1867. His dream was to create a train empire, luxury that traveled across the continent, and he was successful. You could start in London, end in Constantinople, and never lack for anything, whether it be fine dining, comfortable sleeping compartments, or congenial companionship. Each carriage had its own name, its own personality, decorated and fitted to the highest standards of the day. Every need was anticipated, and catered for, down to the least detail.

Image taken from Wikipedia, Plan de vaisselle CIWL

If you had any pretense to importance, you wanted to be seen on that train, and that went for fictional characters as well as the more mundane sort. Dracula's hunters went by Orient Express from Paris to Varna, beating their quarry to the punch. English hero Harry Flashman went with his journalist friend Blowitz on the train's maiden voyage. James Bond nearly lost his life on that train, and Agatha Christie uses it twice, once in a short story, and again in her novel Murder on the Orient Express - probably the most famous novel about the Orient Express.

Image taken from Wikipedia.

The Great War knocked back the Express, and for the first time in its history it was unable to traverse its entire route. At war's end, armistice papers were signed aboard one of the train's luxury carriages; when Hitler kicked off World War Two, he made sure that the French surrender documents were signed aboard that same carriage, and later, when defeat seemed imminent, he blew it up. After World War Two the train revived again, but with a dramatically altered route; some of its traditional stops were now behind the Iron Curtain. However in the end it wasn't history but technology that killed it off; in the jet set age, there was no demand for train travel, however luxurious. For a brief time there was no train at all. Then in 1982 enthusiasts revived the brand, restoring some of the old carriages and building others. Now the London to Venice luxury run is purely for well-heeled sightseers, not for travelers on their own mysterious passage from wherever to whenever.

The train and carriages seen in the photographs are 1930s vintage, probably left there in the 1970s. If the 1980s enthusiasts looked at them at all, presumably they believed what was left wasn't economically viable - they may have been too far gone to be restored.

With all that in mind, some scenario seeds for Night's Black Agents, Fear Itself, and Esoterrorists.

Night's Black Agents: the opposition proposes a midnight meeting at the train yards; whether to exchange hostages or for some other reason is immaterial to the seed. The exchange is to take place aboard one of the abandoned Orient Express cars. As might be expected, it's a trap: two snipers have the train carriage covered, and there's a bomb inside.

Thrilling Elements: 

• A chilled bottle of champagne and an appropriate number of glasses rest on one of the abandoned carriage's seats. [the bomb, on remote detonation, is under the seat.]
• A goods train comes to an unexpected stop some distance away, and the screech can be heard throughout the yards.
• The faint glow of cigarettes can be seen, perhaps some fifty yards away - train staff on a crafty break, or something else?
• Train cars loom ominously in the darkness; every shadow could hide a potential threat.
• A tapped-out, blood-starved Renfield [the Conspiracy think she's a traitor, and this is as good a way as any of dealing with her], captured ally or other defenseless, twitching body is tied up on the carriage floor.
• A train unexpectedly switches to the track the agents are on.

Fear Itself: Urban Explorers say the Orient Express cars have a completely different personality at night, and the latest dare is to go there after midnight and leave some sign that you've been there - a card, a mark, anything. However some of those who do never return, and some who do return say they hear odd noises, a voice speaking in German. In fact, one is the train car Hitler ordered destroyed, but not because he thought it would be used as a war trophy. The demon inside Hitler transferred its consciousness to a special phylactery shortly before war's end, and arranged for it to be hidden inside the train car, for later retrieval by dedicated followers. The dazed and reeling Fuhrer, free of its influence, tried to have the car destroyed, but the demon's followers prevented this. However the last few months of the war saw all the Nazi occultists killed or captured, which meant nobody was able to retrieve the phylactery. There it sits to this day, waiting to be rediscovered - and in the meantime causing all kinds of mayhem to those unwise enough to disturb it without using the proper ritual.

Esoterrorists:  Several Esoterror cells across Europe have united with a singular purpose: to place copies of the abandoned Orient Express cars in every train stop that the original Express visited, before the Great War. Urban explorers from Paris to Istanbul report seeing these train cars, apparently copied to the last detail from the Belgian originals, left in depots and apparently forgotten. Are the Esoterrorists trying to create some kind of spirit copy of the original Orient Express, and if so, is this to weaken the Membrane, or have the Esoterrorists some other purpose in mind? Could this be an attempt to resurrect someone, or something, that rode aboard the Orient Express? Does this have anything to do with a string of murders, also from Paris to Istanbul, with one thing in common: an antique train ticket from 1892 found in the pockets of the dead?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

Playing With Real Toys: Halles Saint-Géry, Brussels (Night's Black Agents, GUMSHOE)

Let's try something new.

I've handled Chilling Locations in the past. I want to expand the concept. Every so often I'm going to post a Real Toys segment, in which I'll take a real world location and write it up as an RPG scene, including a description, thrilling elements, and a potential short plot. Not unlike the bit I wrote for To Treno in Athens, in fact.

So let's start with Halles Saint-Géry in Brussels.

Halles Saint-Géry is a covered market in the heart of Brussels. Saint-Géry was formerly an island on the river Senne, but over time the river was subsumed into the city proper and by 1870 Saint-Géry was an island no longer.

Saint-Géry is named for Saint Gaugericus, who built a chapel on the island in 560 AD. This chapel was replaced by a Gothic church, which in turn was razed during Brussels' flirtation with French Revolutionary ideals and replaced by an open air market. The covered market, completed in 1882, stands in that same spot once occupied by Saint Gaugericus' chapel.

The market hasn't been a market for some time. These days Saint-Géry is better known as a hive of nightclubs and bars, and Halles Saint-Géry is a coffee shop during the day and a bar at night. However on the first Sunday of each month it transforms into a vintage market, where you can get everything from rare vinyl to pianos and furniture.

As Saint-Géry chapel was built by a saint and is known to have housed some of the relics of another Saint, Gudula - her body was, for a time, kept in veneration at Saint Gaugericus' chapel - in a Damned or Supernatural game the Director may rule that sufficient sanctity remains to prevent vampires from freely wandering Saint-Géry, or perhaps from entering Halles Saint-Géry. Though Saint Gudula's relics were moved, the Director may also rule that something was secretly kept back by the clergy at Saint Gaugericus, and which is now interred somewhere at Halles Saint-Géry; possibly underneath the fountain which marked the center of the old open market, and which still exists at the heart of Halles Saint-Géry. Again, this is likely to have significant implications for Damned vampires.

To begin with, a thrilling element list:

• A group of drunken tourists travel unsteadily from the bar to their table, laden with beer.
• A server moves through the crowd dexterously balancing a tray filled with hot coffee.
• Architecturally significant metal balustrade mezzanine balcony over the main floor of the market.
• A beautiful fountain and obelisk, dating back to 1767, at the center of the market, marking where the old chapel used to stand.
• Art installations along the mezzanine, or tucked away in one of the side rooms.     
• (Nighttime) An enthusiastic DJ pumps out electronica to the delight of a happy, buzzed crowd.
• (Vintage Market) Bargains of all kinds on every side, from clothes to statuary.
• Sunlight slips through the clouded panes of the glass ceiling, as evening falls.
• A group of young locals passionately argue the politics of the day, over an ever-growing pile of empty beer glasses.
• Renfields or Damned vampires sweat blood just being here, on the spot where saints once walked, making them much easier to pick out in a crowd.  
• For a brief moment - perhaps just a trick of the light - a shadow assumes the form of a man in a bishop's mitre, right hand raised in benediction; the traditional depiction of Saint Gaugericus.        

Then the Scene:

An Underworld or Government contact - possibly a Network contact - asks or pays the agents to provide security for a meeting at Halles Saint-Géry. The Contact can't afford to use the usual people, or his own staff, because the Contact thinks they have been compromised; the agents, the Contact hopes, are free of vampiric influence.

The Contact intends to meet clandestinely with someone on the other side who says they have vital information about the Conspiracy. This is true, though whether it's because the Conspiracy agent wants to betray the vampires or because this is yet another example of Node fratricide is something the agents may never know.

The meeting is to take place at a time when Halles Saint-Géry is very busy, so this might happen at night when the DJ is pumping out tunes, or during one of the Sunday vintage market days. The meeting point is at the mezzanine, just opposite the obelisk.

Unfortunately for the Conspiracy agent his defection is known to his vampire masters, and assassins are on standby.

The exact nature of the assassination depends on the style of the campaign. In Dust games the assassins have replaced one of the servers - either a barman or one of the coffee shop baristas - with one of their own. This person has been instructed to dose the Conspiracy agent with Polonium, and if successful the Conspiracy agent will die after a few agonizing days.

The agents and their Contact may also be poisoned just through their proximity to the target, though much less severely. The Contact is very ill for a day or two, and the agents must make a Difficulty 6 Health check. Minor effect is +0 damage, Major is +2 damage, always bearing in mind this assumes close proximity to the Polonium, not ingesting it. Somehow swallowing the poison - did someone volunteer to act as taster? Silly ass - means Minor effect of +2 damage and Major +6.

There's a Sense Trouble test Difficulty 6, reduced to Difficulty 3 if the agent making the test spends a point of Chemistry, to detect the Polonium poison before the Conspiracy agent drinks it.

Any Chase scenes involving the assassin start at 2 Lead, as the assassin is right next to the target.

In more action-heavy games the assassin uses a pistol crossbow, firing from the other side of the Hall while standing on the opposite mezzanine. The bolt is tipped with Cyanide, which will be fatal to the intended target and will force agents to make Difficulty 5 Health checks, Minor effect being -1 damage, Major being +3 damage. The Cyanide tip damage is separate from the bolt, which does +0 damage.

The assassin can be spotted before she makes her move, if the agents make a Difficulty 6 Sense Trouble. If the agent spends a point of Tradecraft or Streetwise this can be reduced to Difficulty 3; in-game, the agent recognizes the assassin from a previous encounter, or some half-remembered intel dossier.

Any Chase scene involving the assassin starts at Lead 5, as the assassin starts the chase on the mezzanine opposite.

That's it for now. Enjoy!

Tale of Terror, Vampire Style (Night's Black Agents)

I've been buried in an Esoterror project, so I didn't post anything last week. I know, I'm evil. But then, so is Esoterror, so I guess that works out in the end. More or less?

If you're a Call of Cthulhu fan from way back then you probably remember the Tales of Terror. The Tales are short adventure seeds, with three possible outcomes. The intent being to let the Keeper and players riff on the basic premise, and use one of the three outcomes as the core of the encounter. The old Unspeakable Oath used to print these fairly regularly, but I've no idea what's going on with the Oath these days. I know there's a podcast, but I don't really follow the site any more.

However one quick glance over there shows that it does still publish Tales every so often, so if you're still unclear as to the concept then here's an example written by S Cogswill.

With that in mind, let's tear something from the headlines and use that as a basis for a Night's Black Agents Tale of Terror.

Here's a good one: Pile Up On French Road After 'People Smugglers' Shot At In Police Chase.

"Belgian police opened fire during a cross-border chase with suspected people smugglers driving a car with a British number plate, resulting in a pile-up on a motorway in northern France.

At about 5am on Thursday, a lorry driver in Belgium called local police saying that smugglers had tried to get 17 people into his truck and that he and other drivers had been threatened with a knife, the French paper La Voix du Nord reported.

When police intervened, the suspects sped off by car, first hitting a Belgian police car, then heading on the motorway towards northern France."

For the rest of the article, click on the link.

From there we get to:

Possibility One: Botched Rescue. The so-called people smugglers are actually trying to save the seventeen 'smuggled' victims. These people were being held at a Conspiracy site in Belgium, for reasons the characters don't yet know - blood banks, biological agent testing, Satanic ritual, something else - and their rescuers did their best to get them across the border. However it all went wrong in the worst possible way, and the rescuers panicked and ran. It did not end well. Now there's seventeen people in a detention center who may, at any moment, be stolen back by the Conspiracy, never mind their two would-be rescuers currently in police custody. What next? Character Link: One of the rescuers is a character's Network contact, or even Solace.

Possibility Two: Node Fratricide. Two Nodes within the Conspyramid are fighting, as described in Double Tap. One of those Nodes is in the people smuggling business, and its rival tips off the police. The result is much messier than anyone predicted, because the people smugglers panicked and ran. Now the characters are in an excellent position to exploit the situation, either keeping pressure on the damaged people smuggling Node, or letting the people smugglers point the characters at the other Node, as revenge. Character Link: Either one of the police is a Network contact, or one of the people smugglers is an already established dramatically important character, possibly a foil for one of the player characters.

Possibility Three: Blown Op. Among the people being smuggled is an operative on the run, who was hoping that the smugglers would be able to get him/her across the border after the operative built up too much Heat. However increased police vigilance, thanks to the Heat, led to the car chase and subsequent disaster. Now the operative is in real trouble, and the only hope is that someone gets the operative out before the opposition catch up. Character Link: The characters are gathered as an ad-hoc rescue team, or possibly a snatch team unknowingly working for the opposition, by a friendly Asset Handler. This op needs to happen fast; in a few hours the operative will be moved from a holding cell to somewhere much more secure. In an Edom Files game, the operative is Edom and so are the rescuers.

Why do this? Well, because it's fun, obviously. But also because it serves a useful purpose. There are going to be times when the Director is at a loose end, or the plot seems temporarily derailed by circumstances beyond the Director's control. While waiting for inspiration, the Director can use a Tale of Terror as an easy bridging point between the current impasse and the next significant plot development.

Besides, they're easy to do. All you need is a good headline for inspiration, and from that come up with three reasons as to why those events will interest the characters. After that, let the players go nuts. They're probably going to go nuts anyway, so what the heck.

On that note, since the headlines have been so useful this week, let's have another:

Oil Tanker Washes Up on Liberia Beach with No Crew or Lifeboats

"An abandoned oil tanker has washed up on the shores of Liberia in west Africa, prompting an investigation - and speculation over the fate of the ship's crew.

The Tamaya 1, which is registered in Panama, ran aground on a beach near Robertsport earlier this week, apparently without a crew or lifeboats. On Thursday the Liberia national police and bureau of immigration inspected the ship, days after local residents first discovered it on the beach.

The 64-meter (210ft) tanker's last known position was on 21 April near Gambia and Senegal, according to shipping site Marine Traffic - well north of Liberia along the west African coast. The ship was en route to the Senegalese port of Dakar, according to the site."

Panama registers nearly 20% of the world's merchant fleet. Panama is an open registry, also known as a flag of convenience, and has been since the 1920s. If your ship is Panamanian registered, Panamanian laws apply; this is often done by ship owners to reduce costs, particularly labor, but also the cost of keeping up with environmental regulations. Critics claim open flag jurisdictions are hotbeds of crime and terrorism.

Liberia, the Land of the Free, is still suffering from the effects of the civil war, and rebel leader Charles Taylor's excesses. As of 2005 the constitutional republic is led by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, but it's an uphill struggle. Trial by ordeal is not uncommon in rural districts, and corruption is endemic at all levels of government.

With all that in mind:

Possibility One: Asset On The Run Perhaps it's one of Edom's SBA's, a Conspiracy entity gone rogue, or an escapee from one of the other interested parties' weapons programs. Whichever it is, it's loose, and is doing its best to stay free. A lot of very powerful (and peculiar) people are suddenly very interested in Liberia, and agents are being sent in to see what happened to that escaped asset. Character Link: The agents have faced this particular asset before, but now the tables have turned the asset may be more amenable to moral 'suasion. Or, a Network contact in Liberia is very worried about some of the stories coming in from the hinterlands, and asks for help.

Possibility Two: Stage One of the Master Plan. The Conspiracy is planning something big, really big. The Liberian operation is either a test run, or the first stage in what amounts to a vampiric coup, taking out the democratically elected government and replacing it with a catspaw. Why? Well, Liberia's asset-rich, but perhaps there's something else out there that the Conspiracy really can't do without. Works best with Mutant or Alien vampire types. Character Link: This is it. If the agents are ever going to find out what the Conspiracy is all about, Libera's the place to be.

Possibility Three: Panamanian Shenanigans The Conspiracy's Node in Panama is shipping dangerous materials across the globe, and this time something went very badly wrong. Now that Node is scrambling to cover up the mess, and has hired mercenaries, or a science team backed up by mercenaries, to deal with whatever-it-is that's loose in Liberia. Character Link: One of those mercenaries is a Network contact, possibly a Solace. Alternatively one of the people the mercenary team comes into conflict with is a Network contact or Solace.

Enjoy!