Crime Scene (Rivers of London)

Last week I talked about crime scenes with Night's Black Agents in mind. This time I want to delve into a different system: Rivers of London, Chaosium's BRP version of the magic crime series by Ben Aaronovitch. 

Music video sourced from Matt Bloom

Rivers is, broadly speaking, a kinder, gentler police procedural.

The procedural, as a genre, tends towards the film noir side of the street. Occasionally the Scandi noir where the innocent are abused and the guilty sometimes go unpunished. Even the lighter-hearted versions, like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, feature rapes, narcotics, assaults. To be fair to Evan Hunter (McBain), the main reason his work seems light-hearted is because it was written in what now seems a kinder age. These days you just wouldn't have a Steve Carella, with his mansion and his nice life, outside of a Hallmark novel. 

Whereas apart from the first few novels, where Aaronovitch is finding his way, you don't see a lot of truly awful stuff. There are villains, who are villains in the very traditional sense of the word, and there are heroes. The heroes usually prevail and vanquish those pesky villains. Until next week's exciting episode! 

Star Trek: Bride of Chaotica

In the Rivers series Aaronovitch uses a concept called vestigium, a kind of plot coupon which indicates that magic is present in the scene. Most often it's used to show that a particular crime is a magic crime, and therefore falls under Falcon, which is the series' catchphrase for the Folly's magic department. In some instances this becomes a recurring plot coupon, where its appearance in a particular scene indicates that the protagonist is on the right track. Occasionally defined as 'the sort of noise magic makes when you do it,' in-game there's a host of charts to help the Keeper describe vestigia but not that much information on what it is or does. 

Because if you had that you would have to give it more definition than perhaps anyone would like, especially Aaronovitch, who might want to use it in unusual ways one of these days and would prefer not to be handicapped by hard-and-fast definitions.

Last week we went into what the police do:

First, they secure the crime scene. 

Then they conduct initial investigations of the scene.

They interview witnesses.

They collect evidence for further study.

Securing the crime scene is so it doesn't get interfered with by outsiders. It's not immediately clear what outsiders might do to upset vestigium. Probably nothing, but I suppose someone's own magical taint might be enough to complicate the doo-dah, particularly if that someone was an experienced practitioner or significant magical entity. Their own aura might upset vestigium, on the observation-changes-the-observed principle.

In theory an outsider might destroy the item that gives off vestigium, but the best conductors are things like stone, concrete, PVC.  Things that aren't easily destroyed and sometimes not easily moved. 

The main book gives a list of potential clues that vestigium can give. The smell of vomit. eg = the victim was disgusted by [event] and this strong emotion repeats every time they think of it. The stronger the vestigia the more powerful the magic must have been that evoked it, which again argues that it can't easily be disrupted except by the passage of time or an equally strong magical influence.

The initial investigation of the scene is where the potential vestigium is first tested. No vestigia means no magic was used in the commission of the crime. The main book makes the point that most of London will have vestigium of some kind, so there is a risk of confusing background noise for actual evidence. Theoretically the GM could develop this into a beautiful red herring, but you want the players to be involving themselves in things like vestigium testing as it's an important part of the campaign world. If they start wondering whether it can be relied on, they will stop testing, which may pose a bigger problem for the GM. Doubting the evidence is one thing. Doubting the foundation stones of the campaign setting is another. 

Interviewing witnesses takes on a special resonance when those witnesses might be ghosts, talking foxes, or other peculiar citizens, However, witnesses are witnesses no matter how dead or flea-ridden they may be. This remains basically unchanged, though the characters may have to go to some lengths to gain the trust of those witnesses.

Collecting evidence also remains basically unchanged, though removing bits of London brick and mortar for study back at the lab is frowned upon by English Heritage. Amongst others.

With all that in mind, and borrowing the ancient Star Yard lavatory. now Grade II listed mentioned in a previous episode:

Dying For A Slash

[Slash = British slang, urination]

A terrified woman reports seeing an assault, potentially a murder, near the Star Yard, Holborn, Grade II lavatories. As this happened while an estate agent was showing potential buyers round the Victorian house the pissoir belongs to, this escalated rather quickly. 

The house is worth more than 4 million quid, and a local councillor believes themselves to be on rather better terms with the River Fleet (an important character within the campaign world) than perhaps they are. Strings are being pulled. Is this a Falcon case? The councillor is betting yes; after all, the body vanished without a trace. No body means magical funny business, in the councillor's book.  

The area, Star Yard, used to be in the warehousing district and the building, now a very expensive house, once was storage for legal documents. The pissoir, a cast iron contrivance, has been there since the warehouse was built in the 1880s. Both London brick and cast iron are excellent conductors of vestigium. 

The pissor was in use until relatively recently and has been listed as Historic since 1974.

According to the terrified witness, a young man bleeding from the neck staggered out of the lavatory and made his unsteady way down the street. She was standing in the house opposite at the time, on one of the upper floors, being shown round by the estate agent. The witness is convinced the man had been stabbed. She ran to street level to help him, but by the time she got there he'd vanished. 

Witness: Angela Parker, 28 F, American. Her husband Rich, Londoner 30 M works in the City and was present when she saw the injured party but wasn't looking out the window. She was. By the time Rich came to the window the injured party was no longer visible.

Social: Rich is lying about what he saw.

Estate Agent: Connie McEwan of Knight Frank (agency), 30 F, all personality has been ironed out of her unless she's had a few down the pub. Not happy. 

The injured party: male, late 20s early 30s, probably BME, jeans, T-shirt with some kind of logo. Angela doesn't remember what the logo was. (Successful Social: she saw a shirt just like it in a vintage shop not far from Star Yard).

Councillor: Edwin Stokes, 31 M, Tory, prides himself on his connections and his suits. He knows almost nothing about the demi-monde and only knows about the Folly from rumor, but pretends to know everything about everyone. He invokes Fleet's name but has only met her once and has no relationship with her.

Research: there was an assault at this location back in 1973. It made the back pages of the local rags and any records pertaining to it have long since gone the way of the dodo. Hard success: the assault gets a mention in music histories and magazines, as the victim was an up-and-coming musician, Rolley 'Rainbow' Martin aka Preston Dinkins.

Vestigia pissoir: laughter, cigarettes, cold weather; an overlay of old malice, like poison in the blood.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

 

 

Bitcoin or Cannabis? Smoke it and See (Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists)

 

From Moment News

West Midlands police thought they were raiding a cannabis farm when they bust into an industrial storage unit in Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell, on 18 May this year. All the signs were there: a drone they'd sent for a fly-by spotted massive amounts of heat gain, almost certainly caused by the lamps needed to grow all those valuable plants, and surveillance noticed people coming and going at all times of day and night, again indicative of nogoodniks up to shenanigans. If all that wasn't enough the unit bristled with surplus wiring ducts and new vent systems, suggesting massive energy use and a need to throw off heat as efficiently and quickly as possible. 

So in they went, and found a bitcoin farm instead. One that was stealing power from the local grid to the tune of £16,000 a month. While mining isn't illegal, theft from the power grid definitely is. Birmingham Mail seems to think 'three English nerds' are the mastermind behind this scheme, which ... I mean, it probably was computer geeks, well spotted, glad to see we've got journalists of that calibre working in British media today.

The Mail also alleges that the value of the electricity stolen was twice that of the bitcoin mined. Which just goes to show that crime doesn't pay, or at least doesn't pay as much as the criminals thought it might. 

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a scam, bitcoin mining is a big operation. Gone are the days when your PC humming away in the corner could earn you retirement money. The Sandwell operation, though one of the largest in the area, was a few hundred units altogether, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the massive setups that exist elsewhere.

From Top 5

Which looks remarkably like a Night's Black Agents scenario in the making.

I've discussed Facilities before. The Sandwell operation looks like a Low Security, Medium Monitoring Manufacturing facility. The miners clearly had no idea how to keep their operation away from prying eyes, beyond 'stick it in a shed and hope for the best.' They needed to monitor it often, to make sure its systems were working properly. Overheating must have been a major concern. 

The bitcoin mines mentioned in the Top 5 are clearly Medium Security, High Monitoring Manufacturing facilities. They have their special needs, cooling being critical, along with access to uninterrupted electricity supplies, and a compliant political environment. If your facility mines, say, 20 bitcoin a day, then at current prices it's earning something like $780,000 each day, easily billions of dollars each month. Well worth going to all that effort, even if as manager of the facility all you get is a cut of the net. 

Of course, that assumes those units are actually mining bitcoin. In game worlds where pseudo-science rules apply, all that computing power could be going towards ... almost anything. Uncovering all the secret names of God to collapse the universe. Mapping Satan's DNA and tracing His Satanic Majesty's lineage on earth. Creating a virtual reality environment powerful enough to store human minds. Creating a race of obedient AIs capable of - you get the idea. 

Let's say this is Esoterrorists. That setting is all about weakening the Membrane so strange entities can creep through into the mundane world, and the Terrorists of the title are the ones who want that to happen. Then the so-called Bitcoin Mine is actually some kind of esoteric device that either is deliberately intended to weaken the membrane, or which does so accidentally while in pursuit of other goals. 

One potential side effect is that smaller, less important entities may creep through just by accident, perhaps as a symptom of a larger problem. Like roaches round a garbage spill, these entities aren't main-plot relevant but the fact that they're here at all is evidence that things are going badly wrong.

An interesting twist could be that the 'bitcoin miners' are actually trying to repair the membrane with their esoteric device. They see something wrong in the immediate area and, since they don't have a Commissioner Gordon-style phone to call in the ghostbusters of OV, they do their best with what they've got. So destroying or disabling the device could actually make things much worse. 

Or it's intended as a remote working device. There are some entities which, when they burst through the membrane, destroy everything in the immediate vicinity. The casters know this, so rather than do the dirty work themselves - and get killed - they set up the bitcoin mine to remotely activate the ritual. Perhaps when the cops burst in, so the summoned entity has something to munch on.

Let's say this is Night's Black Agents. In that setting, the 'bitcoin mine' is either the creation of a vampire Node, or someone who wants to get the Node's attention. So whatever it's intended to do will depend on the kind of setting you, as Director, are shooting for. 

Supernatural: vampires are the result of magical or other supernatural activities on Earth; spirits, ghosts, witchcraft and the like. The bitcoin mine is one part of a larger ritual. Just as standing stones once established nodes on a network of ley lines, channeling supernatural power, so too do these new 'standing stones' establish connective points on a new network of supernatural energy. Their calculations are but a part of a larger ritual mystery, perhaps intended to bring forward the date of the apocalypse.

Damned: Vampires are the work of Satan or other explicitly demonic creatures opposed to mankind and God. That isn't a bitcoin mine, it's a demon summoned forth from Hell to serve at its master's pleasure. Maybe it's some kind of footsoldier awaiting command, or maybe it's an independent contractor scheming to its own ends. It undoubtedly has control over the internet in some fashion, perhaps just in its local area - for now. Or maybe the bitcoin it creates are themselves Satanic in some way, a corruptive influence to bring more people under the sway of His Satanic Majesty. 

Alien: Vampires are alien beings, or earthly beings who nevertheless follow different laws of physics. The aliens either want to go home or to make Earth more like home. For that to happen requires significant mathematical calculations, of a sort that just weren't possible till now. Sure, a mathematician working with an abacus in a cave could manage it eventually, but eventually takes a really long time. Now the aliens are able to significantly advance their plans, with borrowed technology. Even the mines' affect on climate change - all that heat - could be part of the aliens' ultimate goal. After all, they need Earth to be just like home ... whatever that is.

Mutant: Vampires are earthly beings infected or changed by (or into) some freak of nature. Even freaks of nature need funding. Up till now the vampires have had to rely on conventional means to make a dollar, but now they can generate cash literally out of thin air. This was just an experiment, to see what they could get away with. The next stage in the project is an even bigger mine, and now they know what mistakes to avoid to reduce the chance of detection.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

XCOM: Chimera Squad (Not Quite Review Corner)

This is a fun one!

In the world of XCOM, an alien invasion in 2016 subjugated Earth under the rule of the Elders and their many unusual minions. However the secretive military counter-insurgency XCOM rallied, the Elders were defeated, and now everyone gets to live happily ever after.

Sorta.

The problem is there are millions of non-humans, human hybrids, clones and other remnants of the bad old days kicking around. Mass slaughter is off the table. Everyone has to learn to live together and forget the past. In the riot-torn starport of City 31, precise geographic location unspecified, that means someone has to keep the peace.

That someone is Chimera Squad. That someone is you.

Chimera Squad is a group of hero-level characters, some human, others not. They all have their unique abilities, personalities, and quirks. Axiom the Muton likes to eat what he catches, and loses his temper very easily. Blueblood the ex-cop has personal ties to City 31. Torque the Viper just wants a chance to tear loose and chew on Canadian bacon. None of it is in-depth; you learn about as much about these characters as you do the bulls of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct or any police procedural.

The characterization's strong, voice acting's good and the game isn't so hung up on its cinematics as to require full motion capture of every least facial twitch. There are radio bits and other snippets to keep you engaged with the city, and while City 31 doesn't have the same gravitas a city of its size in the real world would, it does feel solid and engaging.

Chimera Squad's special ops cops face off against former soldiers of the occupation, weapons smugglers and psychic psychotics, trying to keep a lid on the city's roiling pot of trouble. If things get too hot, the city will collapse and your mission will end.

Mechanically this is the same small scale squad tactical game you enjoyed when it was called XCOM 2. The maps aren't as huge, but you face the same strategic challenges: hide here, go there, run to higher ground for a better shot? Flank, and risk being flanked? Play it safe but miss out on an opportunity? These are the questions you'll have to answer on the battlefield, but be warned: the enemy's intelligent and very dangerous. Get it wrong, and you're cooked.

The big difference is in this game there is no permadeath. If a cop falls, they have to be rescued before they Bleed Out. Otherwise the game ends there; Chimera Squad can't afford to lose a single operative.

At least, that's the obvious big difference. Having played, I now know that the bigger difference by far is how the game treats its special use items.

In previous iterations when you gave your troopers a grenade, a medkit or a similar one-shot item, you knew that to use that item you needed to spend one of your trooper's action points. Each trooper only had two, so it became part of the game's economy. The opportunity cost of using an item meant you didn't have that action point to shoot or move.

That's gone. Using an item costs nothing. It's grenade Christmas, and you are Santa Boom-Boom. Spray medkits everywhere, charge up your troopers with whatever hot alien tech you bought at the Scavenger's Market. You can still move and shoot after flinging your kit around like a frenzied monkey. Throw a bubble grenade to tie down the trooper who otherwise would flank you, move up, and beat his buddy senseless with the butt of your shotgun.

That's the other big battlefield change: you can bring them in alive. I started using the Subdue maneuver early on because it suited my concept of how cops should behave: take them alive whenever possible. Sure, you get Intelligence rewards from the interrogation, but that wasn't why I did it. I figure, I'm playing a cop. Cops arrest people.

Then I noticed something. Subdue never fails. If you can get to the target you have a 100% chance to hit, which in RNG-happy XCOM is the Golden Snitch. Subdue doesn't use ammunition. Subdue can do as much as 5 points of damage under the right circumstances. Some characters like Cherub and Zephyr can do much more than that. Zephyr can crush multiple targets in one action, and Cherub can hit several targets with his shield bash wave. So given the option between taking a shot that might miss and uses ammunition, or Subdue, which never fails and costs nothing, I often pick Subdue. Perps vanish under a wall of beefy cop flesh, while off in the back Torque reads the Miranda warning - or whatever passes for Miranda in City 31.

Which is the game in a nutshell. Chimera Squad seems simple enough, but there's a lot going on under the hood. It allows you to play several different ways, but understanding all the systems feels like juggling frogs. I lost my first Ironman game to Anarchy after creaming the first two opposing factions, because I didn't understand all the ways I could crush Anarchy and keep the city moving. I didn't put Verge first in the Breach because I didn't understand how his Levitation ability helps me. I didn't appreciate Scars until I noticed my guys missing shots and moving slowly because they were covered in Scars.

You'll find yourself falling in love with one character, like Terminal, swearing you can't go out without her. Then you'll see how Zephyr's martial arts are game-winners, or how Cherub's shield block can save a tricky breach. There's enough variety in your heroes that you will want to see how they all perform, and find new ways to use their abilities. There's no reason to pick one squad and stick with that one squad forever and ever Amen.

As a game it's remarkably forgiving, technically as well as mechanically. My NUC's processor is underpowered for this and occasionally smells bunt toast, immediately crashing out. It often coincides with a lot of on-screen activity, like enemy reinforcements arriving on-scene. This is infrequent; it happens maybe once in a four hour session, and sometimes doesn't happen at all. Given my machine's not up to the game's spec, I'm pleased I get this level of functionality. There are one or two graphical glitches, but nothing to write home about. Frankly, I've seen top-end AAA titles with worse graphical issues.

So of course I'm recommending it, particularly in these times of wonder where staying in all day is the new normal. If you're not already mainlining Animal Crossing because you like noodling around with raccoon bankers, then now's the time to save the city with your band of misfit 5-0.

Enjoy!

Tweety Bird and the Bug Zapper (Night's Black Agents)

This post is inspired by two recent news articles about stun guns and birds of prey.

The number of stun guns seized by British border police has increased by 70% over the last year, according to a recent Guardian article. The devices, which are illegal in the United Kingdom, are often brought in by criminals seeking to avoid more serious gun possession charges, but are sometimes 'smuggled' by accident as tourists buy novelty items, like stun guns disguised as mobile phones, without thinking of the consequences.

Meanwhile Dutch police are training birds of prey to bring down drones, again according to a Guardian piece. The birds have been tested over the last few years and the tests have been successful. The trained eagles bring down the drones like featherless pigeons, and though less tasty than their usual prey the eagles have a 100% success rate and no injuries.

In Night's Black Agents the use of stun guns is not precisely discouraged, but not welcomed with open arms either. 'Whatever other effects they may have,' say the main rules, on page 62, 'Tasers also short-circuit combat scenes, and turn fights into one-shot beats. In other words, tasers are boring.'  Of course on that same page the authors also say 'they're invaluable investigative tools in those minor excursions that precede [the climactic confrontation].'

It's a tricky balance. The problem is mechanical. Guns and other weapons do damage directly to Health; lose enough of it, and you fall over. It's a mechanic that's served us well since the first Fighter met the first Orc in a ten by ten room. Stun guns ignore that whole system by not doing damage to Health at all, instead producing a specific effect instantaneously. At least D&D let you have a saving throw, but in NBA it's zap-crackle-thump. It's like giving all wizards the Fireball spell right from the start.

Theoretically the Thriller Combat rules negate this by giving the skilled combatant extra tools to play with. If Woody Allen with a stun gun goes up against Schwarzenegger, the mighty Governator can Jump In and then Disarm, or Extra Attacks, or whatever else will pound Allen into hamburger before he gets a zap off. If the Governator's MOS happens to be Hand to Hand all the better, though knowing him his MOS is probably Shooting. Allen can't do much about this since his Weapons pool is, if anything, -3. His Athletics may be even lower.

Arguably in these circumstances a taser makes fights more interesting, not boring, because it ups the stakes. Suddenly your martial arts expert who was breezing through the fight has to think about what happens next.

However I've yet to encounter a player whose mastery of the combat rules is up to that task. More often than not the player doesn't know everything her character is capable of, and there's an element of deer-in-headlights the minute it becomes a Contest. This shouldn't be an issue with experienced players, but you can hardly give a group access to everything up to and including Hellfire missiles and then say 'No! You can't use the stun guns till you're experienced!'

The stun gun problem becomes even more of a conundrum when you consider that the police carry tasers. The UK police often use them, as do the French, and while less common elsewhere in Europe many of the European police forces have them. It's pointless pretending the players wouldn't have access to tasers, not when the characters get a free Glock with their Weetabix every morning.

On the flip side, players using stun guns against, say, vampires should get short shrift, and not just because tasering Dracula and then pounding pointy bits of wood into the Vampire Lord's quivering flesh - paging Doctor Freud, I say again, paging Doctor Freud - lacks drama. Tasers work on human biology, and the whole point is that biology is no longer an issue for vampires.

But there's that mechanical problem again. In game Vampires have Health like the rest of us. Hit 'em, shoot 'em, stab 'em and eventually they fall down. It takes a lot of effort, but it can be done. So if they're vulnerable to weapons, what makes tasers any different?

In those circumstances the best defense is a good offense. Specifically, an offense that doesn't let the characters get a shot off. Vampires didn't get to where they are today by letting a bunch of jumped-up monkeys take command of the combat arena. Distortion, Temporal Distortion, Vampiric Speed, Apportation, all make tasers a bit irrelevant. Moreover I'd argue that any Regeneration or Strength ability means whatever effect a taser might have is immediately negated as soon as the ability kicks in. Get in, wash yourself in the blood of your enemies, rinse, repeat.

All that said, would I encourage taser use in my game? Well ... yes.

While I agree with the concern that tasers make hand to hand fights less cinematic, I'd say that concern is over-hyped. I'd also say that there are mechanical ways around the problem, like Regeneration, or by using Aberrance (possibly combined with Strength) to overcome the effect. Finally I'd argue that in certain styles of game - Dust, Mirror - a means of knocking people out without permanent injury is extremely useful, and in keeping with the genre.

In The Prisoner, for instance, Number Six is knocked unconscious all the time; usually by gas, but then the taser hadn't really been invented yet, not in its current form. In fact the trope's borrowing from a very old pulp concept, the Mickey Finn. Sam Spade gets knocked out often by the old Mickey, as do all the pulp heroes. Turning to video games for a moment, in nearly all the Stealth genre titles - Thief, Dishonored, Deus Ex - there's some kind of sleep mechanic. Corvo has his darts, Adam Jensen his silenced sleep pistol and rifle, Garret his cudgel, bow and peculiar arrows. Heck, even Hitman, a series all about the killing, allows Agent 47 to knock out targets non-lethally.

In fact Stealth titles tend to have a mechanic that Night's Black Agents lacks; a hand-to-hand nonlethal takedown without the taser. There's an implicit assumption that combat must be lethal, an assumption that, I suspect, goes right back to that Orc in his ten by ten room. Yet most Stealth titles give out achievements by the bucketful for 'clean hands' Infiltration. Killing is implicitly discouraged, either by some hit to your character's karma or, as with Invisible Inc, by substantially increasing the difficulty of the infiltration with each kill.

So yes, I would allow the taser. I would encourage nonlethal takedowns, as they fit the setting and the genre. I'd up the Infiltration difficulty with each kill, and I'd probably invent new Achievements to encourage clean hands infiltration too, something like this:

Like A Ghost: complete the infiltration and exfiltration of a guarded facility requiring Difficulty 5 or higher Infiltration, without killing any guards or civilians on site. Refresh 3 points Infiltration.

Now let's turn to Tweety Bird.

When I first read that article my mind immediately turned to thoughts of bats, giant or otherwise, taking down drones. And lo, my heart grew warm with loving feelings. However it then occurred to me that I don't often see players use drones, at least not as efficiently as they could.

Now, this might be a geographic issue. I live in Bermuda; there aren't many drones here. There are some, and they do excellent work, but the fad really hasn't taken off the way it has in the States or Europe. So my players don't think of them as an option.

However there are plenty of examples, particularly in recent video games, of drones being used in ways I've not yet seen tabletop players emulate. Say, in Tactical Fact Finding Benefits or improvised Cooperative moves like this:

Military Science / Human Terrain and Mechanics / Surveillance: use a drone to scout ahead and tag potential targets and infiltration routes. Note that the benefit implicitly acknowledges there's more than one way to get the same effect.

Mind you, it also acknowledges that, as Director, I'm never sure whether a drone used this way counts as a Mechanics or Surveillance spend. I can see a good argument for Piloting too, but that just makes things even more complicated. On the whole I'd lean towards Mechanics.

A drone could also be used to spray an area with some kind of aerosol-based bane. This would probably be a Cooperative Mechanics/Vampirology, with a potentially devastating effect: imagine the vampire, having hidden itself in some inaccessible spot, emerging from its coffin only to get a squirt of holy water or similar right in the face.

Of course there's the more direct approach. Drones threaten airports all the time, hence the Dutch eagles. A private jet coming in to land could find itself taken out by an explosives-packed drone sucked right up into the engine.

Playing with the concept, there are those simplified inflatable fish drones. Picture a stealth kill in a crowded place, or a party, with one of those babies. It would have to be a very simple lightweight payload, probably some kind of contact poison spray, but for sheer cinematics you can't beat a flying fish killer. The target will never see it coming.

Then there's drone hacking. The Dutch, as mentioned in the article, have tried this but apparently it isn't as efficient as eagle hitmen. That said, an agency with government money to burn - like, say, Edom - has probably cracked that problem. I'd rate a drone hack at Difficulty 4 for commercial models, and 8 for military drones. At least, I devoutly hope it's 8 given the armament those things carry.

That's enough for this week. Enjoy!

Edit: ordinarily I don't update these, but in a Tweet this afternoon Ken Hite was kind enough to say:

'Nonlethal takedown is just HtH against a mook (Player-Facing Combat); drones use Piloting or Driving, Agents pick'

So the drone question is resolved.

Not as convinced ref: nonlethal, as treating it as basic HtH against a mook doesn't really fulfil the choke-hold visual you get from Stealth titles, which is what I'm struggling towards. It's a bit like the Outside Xbox three-ways-to-play videos; I'm aiming for a full Andy, and coming up with Jane, at best. Possibly Mike if things really go pear-shaped.

I'm tempted to use the Called Shot rules, but that can get very expensive very quickly which would make it pointless in mook combats. Still, a Called Shot Throat (from behind, to fulfil the cinematic requirement) would silence the target.

I think, reluctantly, that calling it pure hand-to-hand is the most practical approach, even if it doesn't scratch the itch. Pure HtH with an obligatory bit of technothriller monologue would be even better.

Restoring Confidence in Paradise (Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists)

In 2010 the small island of St Lucia, population 175,000, was in the grip of what seemed a major crisis. Violent crime after violent crime rocked the island, at a time when St Lucia's tourism industry, already badly beaten by the recession, could stand very few shocks. The decision was made to launch Operation Restore Confidence, a major play to restore order by massive, armed police action, island-wide.

The area of the police’s focus? Wilton’s Yard formerly known as the Graveyard.   As the STAR reached the scene, reporters were met with hostility by some residents who claimed the media is being unfair in helping to label Wilton’s Yard as a hot spot.  On the flip side, others were supporting the police action but disagreed with the weapons the cops brandished.

From one end of Chaussee Road to the other was littered with police officers from various departments.  The most noticeable fixture was that of a gold pick up van parked between Courts and Roses.  On the back of the van stood a single member of the Special Services Unit scanning the area while an officer covered from head to toe in black, not an inch of skin visible, complete with a black ski mask, balanced a fifty caliber high powered rifle on sand bags.  The rifle was leveled at an unseen target along the Morne Du Don Road.

The island's prime minister at the time, Stephenson King, promised that 'no stone would be left unturned' in the search for violent criminals. While turning stones, the police were also shooting people, and it's since been revealed that at least twelve of those shot and killed were on a special police 'black list', Several other deaths attributable to police action were covered up as killings by unknown assailants, rolled into the murder statistics and forgotten about. It was alleged that all those shot were in fact murdered by the police, and that evidence was planted at the scene to make each killing appear to be a legitimate shoot.

This has come to light in part because the United States, strongly suspecting that human rights violations had occurred, withdrew all its support from the St Lucia police, including training exercises. St Lucia, a former colony, is dependent on foreign aid for its continued survival. This sign of discontent from such an important ally was a major blow.

The island initially tried to silence criticism by holding inquests of its own, which, in 2012, declared all twelve shootings lawful. This internal investigation did not satisfy the United States, so Jamaican investigators came to St Lucia to hold their own investigation. The Jamaican investigation has determined that the killings were staged by St Lucia police, though the full report has yet to be published.    

In an address from the current Prime Minister, Dr Kenny Anthony, it was said that the police force acted within 'an atmosphere of impunity and permissiveness.' 'Willful blindness' on the part of senior officers fostered this atmosphere, and 'the crime problem in St Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians, government officials, business persons and police officers.' Dr Anthony also said the full report would not be published, as its contents might endanger the lives of witnesses who came forward under condition of anonymity.

There's been no clear indication from Dr Anthony as to what might happen next. 'Personnel adjustments' have been promised, but prosecutions have yet to be announced, and the Police Commissioner still has his job, despite his apparent willful blindness.

In a small community like St Lucia, it is easy for local politicians, police and businesspeople to picture themselves as big fish, dominant people, beyond reproach and certainly beyond prosecution. This can lead them to do things which, in other jurisdictions, even knowingly corrupt jurisdictions, would be considered reckless in the extreme. When a reminder comes that they are, in fact, small fry in a large ocean, it can come as a nasty shock. Stephenson King, at the time of Operation Restore Confidence, was not only Prime Minister but also Minister in charge of National Security, which presumably makes him one of the willfully blind, along with the police commissioner and an unnamed number of others involved at a high level with the Operation, and with the police force in general. At this point there is no telling whether any of them will be prosecuted.

From an RPG perspective, what does this suggest?

An Esoterror operation could probably be conducted in a location like St Lucia without fear of disruption by the locals. What if the Ordo turns up, though? Usually the Ordo operates with the tacit approval of the local authorities, or at least is able to carry on its business without worrying too much about what the police might think. Even if the police do get involved on the enemy side, it's often a small faction within the force, not the force as a whole. In a jurisdiction like St Lucia, it may be a very different story. The cops, perhaps backed by important politicians, might be actively involved, and become an armed opposition to the Ordo's activities.

An interesting potential capstone to an Esoterror scenario set in a location such as this could be an Operation much like Restore Confidence, in which the police go in mob-handed and ready for war. This could easily turn into an extended Chase sequence, in which the characters have to avoid being captured, for fear of being put against a wall and shot in a so-called legitimate shoot.

In Night's Black Agents, assuming Conspyracy control over the territory, an Operation Restore Confidence could be a sign of local resistance to the vampire masters, with all the local vampire hunters ending up on the police 'black list.' The protagonists could arrive on the scene some time afterwards, perhaps as part of the investigative team sent in to determine whether the police action was justified. This could be an interesting part of a character's backstory, and a reason why they got burnt; the investigation came up with the wrong result, and the Conspyracy dealt summarily with the investigative team. Or, assuming the protagonists are on the ground at the time the Operation takes place, their investigation into local corruption - perhaps they were following up information that suggested the local financial industry wasn't what it seemed - turns deadly, when the police get involved.

That's it for now! Enjoy.

the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers - See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

within an environment of impunity and permissiveness - See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

within an environment of impunity and permissiveness - See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The investigators said that during "Operation Restore Confidence", the Royal St Lucia Police Force operated within an environment of impunity and permissiveness designed to achieve the desired results.
They found that “wilful blindness existed in respect of the Commissioner of Police and particular members of his leadership and management team.”
The report also suggests that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers.”
The investigators added that senior police officers refused to cooperate with the investigation and computers were tampered with to affect the investigation.
- See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The investigators said that during "Operation Restore Confidence", the Royal St Lucia Police Force operated within an environment of impunity and permissiveness designed to achieve the desired results.
They found that “wilful blindness existed in respect of the Commissioner of Police and particular members of his leadership and management team.”
The report also suggests that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers.”
The investigators added that senior police officers refused to cooperate with the investigation and computers were tampered with to affect the investigation.
- See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The investigators said that during "Operation Restore Confidence", the Royal St Lucia Police Force operated within an environment of impunity and permissiveness designed to achieve the desired results.
They found that “wilful blindness existed in respect of the Commissioner of Police and particular members of his leadership and management team.”
The report also suggests that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers.”
The investigators added that senior police officers refused to cooperate with the investigation and computers were tampered with to affect the investigation.
- See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The investigators said that during "Operation Restore Confidence", the Royal St Lucia Police Force operated within an environment of impunity and permissiveness designed to achieve the desired results.
They found that “wilful blindness existed in respect of the Commissioner of Police and particular members of his leadership and management team.”
The report also suggests that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers.”
The investigators added that senior police officers refused to cooperate with the investigation and computers were tampered with to affect the investigation.
- See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The investigators said that during "Operation Restore Confidence", the Royal St Lucia Police Force operated within an environment of impunity and permissiveness designed to achieve the desired results.
They found that “wilful blindness existed in respect of the Commissioner of Police and particular members of his leadership and management team.”
The report also suggests that “the crime problem in Saint Lucia is facilitated by corrupt politicians/government officials, business persons and police officers.”
The investigators added that senior police officers refused to cooperate with the investigation and computers were tampered with to affect the investigation.
- See more at: http://stluciatimes.com/article/pm-2010-black-list-existed-investigators-recommend-%E2%80%9Call-police-officers-involved-be#sthash.yEP4PGvS.dpuf

The Cop Shop (Trail of Cthulhu / Night's Black Agents)

At some point the player characters are going to run afoul of the law, even if they are the law. The things they get up to - breaking and entering is often where it starts, but never where it stops - almost guarantees that, at some point, the local plods are going to want to have a quiet word. Or possibly a loud one, depending on the jurisdiction, but in either case you, as Keeper, need to have some idea what to do next.

First, let's set the scene. It doesn't matter what era the game's taking place in, for this purpose, as the scene's broadly the same. The characters have done something blatantly illegal, and evidence remains that might indicate who did it, and how. Moreover there's always the chance that the police know more than they ought about the occult aspects of the campaign, whether it's infested with bloodsuckers, or a mere bubble of fragile humanity lodged in a sea of unthinking chaos. Then what happens, and what ought the characters to do about it?

The Keeper needs to bear in mind that:

1. The cops don't know everything. Outside of television and Agatha Christie, there really isn't a master detective out there who, having taken only a cursory look at the crime scene, understands exactly how it was done and who did it. To the players, what happened may seem painfully obvious. To the first responders, it's a pool of blood, some expended rounds, and maybe some body parts or a corpse. 
2. Finding out what happened takes time. Investigating the scene, making drawings or taking photographs, collecting evidence, the canvass, interviews;all these things take hours, days, maybe even months before any kind of resolution is achieved.
3. There are always other suspects. That cult leader or necromancer the characters put down like a rabid dog undoubtedly had plenty of enemies, and the police are going to go through that list name by name. It only gets more complicated if anything screwy's on the scene, like a burial pit with a dozen or more other dead bodies in it, or physical evidence that suggests the decedent is someone, or thing, completely out of the ordinary.
4. There are always other cases. To the protagonists, this is the only crime in town, but to the cops this is maybe the third shooting tonight. It could just go cold, as so many cases do, or  something much more urgent - a terror threat, a spectacular burglary - may come up to distract the law.  

That said, if the characters make it easy for them, the cops might be knocking on their door sooner rather than later. Did they leave fingerprints everywhere? Or, worse yet, business cards? Were they seen talking with the decedent shortly before the incident? Did the dead person or crime scene have any kind of record of them, say in an appointments book, CCTV, or a collection of blackmail photographs? Then the characters ought to take care, or they'll find themselves in serious trouble.

But what happens when the police know more than the characters would like them to? Some fantasy novels - Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, for instance - assume that there are organizations, or people, within the police who understand the spooky stuff, and who can take action against it. What happens then? 

A great deal will depend on the setting. Trail of Cthulhu posits two types of game, Purist, and Pulp. Bookhounds of London further divides into Arabesque, Technicolor, and Sordid. A Pulp or Technicolor game is probably best suited to a campaign setting in which the police have a Peter Grant style organization within it, dedicated to dealing with occult threats and capable of using arcane powers. In that kind of setting the police could be very useful allies, but even more dangerous enemies. If the Occult Sciences secret division of whatever passes for Military Intelligence decides that the player characters know too much, it has all the resources of a vengeful Government to bring to bear on them. At that point the characters had better leave the area as soon as they're able.

A Purist setting allows for more nuance. There probably are policemen who've seen too much; there may even be one or two who've begun putting the pieces together. But those are lone wolves, disbelieved - even mocked - by their fellow officers. Promotion doesn't come easily to them. In some situations - an Arabesque campaign, for instance - these policemen may have other resources to bring to bear. Imagine a setting in which the constable who always seemed to have that certain something about him, is actually a Knight of the City, protected by London itself; though he, oblivious, may not realize it, the City is helping him each day, keeping him from harm, helping him in his work. Or one in which, being a seventh son of a seventh son, he has the gift of second sight.

Sordid has its own complications. There may be police who know a little about the occult, or even the Mythos, but nothing's free in a Sordid world, and everyone's on the take. Expecting someone like that to be a faithful ally is expecting far too much. On the other hand, a cop with that kind of knowledge may throw their weight around, leaning on the characters when they need to, even blackmailing them if the opportunity arises. 

Night's Black Agents is a different situation. In those games, the police exist mainly as roadblocks or barriers, to be thrown in whenever Heat gets a little too much for the characters. Exciting chase scenes can be had, maybe even a gun battle or two, but the characters generally aren't expected to do much interacting with the local law on a face-to-face basis, particularly since the agents probably aren't going to be in one place long enough. Athens tonight, Paris tomorrow, and if they happen to leave two bodies behind in their travels, they're too far away from the scene to care.

In those situations, it may be worth the Keeper making a note of where the characters have been, in case they go back. Say they made a mess in Athens, went to Paris, had several more adventures, and then, after the Athens debacle has long since faded in the players' memories, they go back to Greece - Heraklion, why not - for another piece of the puzzle. The characters may have forgotten, but the Greek police won't, and old sins may come back to haunt the agents. Sure, they've changed covers since then, but it only takes one careless moment for Heat to suddenly skyrocket, as the cops realize the doofus they caught taking photographs of a military base is actually the same person involved in multiple homicides a year ago.