Death Mask 3 Exploring Rome

Rome: Masks, hidden identities, hidden agendas, Gorgons, the shadowy influence of Egypt's past, the Pharaohs of old returning to take their rightful place.  

Let's dig a little deeper. 

The whole point behind the cult is that it's run by masks, whose main purpose in life is to make more masks, to extend their already lengthy existence. These masks derive their motivating force and their purpose from the old Gorgon cult, which fled to Egypt when the original cult bases in Greece were smashed. Now the cult promotes a return of the old Pharaonic ways, mainly to encourage new Egyptian recruits to join, but at its heart it's the same Gorgon cult it was many centuries ago.

It's probably worth remembering that when Perseus allegedly slew Medusa he did it using flying sandals, a cap of Hades that made him invisible, and an adamantine sickle. Those sound like useful cult-bashing relics to me. Some or all of these might have found their way to Egypt over the years and are now hidden in some tomb or other, or perhaps on the back shelf of one of the many, many curio shops in Cairo or Alexandria. 

What if, for instance, that adamantine sickle is in fact a khopesh?  Ceremonial versions of those were found with Tutankhamun; if King Tut can have them then there's no reason why Perseus' old blade can't have found its way into some priest's tomb. What if those battered sandals are hanging up with the stock in some souk or other? 

The cap of night found its way into several different hands; Hermes had it, Athena had it, there's no telling where else it might have gone after Perseus used it. He may have dropped it in Mycenae, where he was King. If so, then the archaeologist Schliemann might have found it while digging for Trojan loot, in the later 1870s. If that happened then the cap would be in Berlin at the time of the campaign, but then the Great Museums of the world are part of the Building so there's no reason not to have a side trip off to Berlin. Nor, for that matter, is there a compelling reason why a German archaeologist might not sneak the thing away in their bags and baggage for a trip to Egypt. For ... research purposes. Not because they're a cult member seeking promotion. Or because they're a cult opponent trying to smash the new Pharaoh. Possibilities ... 

OK, so we have some Banes and possibly also treasures to be sought for in the first arc of the campaign. Fine. So who's the OPFOR?

Remember, all OPFOR have:

• Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

What does the cult have?

Power: far-reaching political, social and quasi-military authority and influence within Egypt. Their spies and enforcers are everywhere. They can have people killed. They can deploy assassins, peculiar occult magics, ancient mummies - all within Egypt proper. Outside Egypt, their influence drops off dramatically. They can send agents to do their bidding, but they can't just snap their metaphorical fingers and have a man in, say, Berlin, drop dead that same moment. 

However, this power is basically illicit. They have no actual civil or legal authority. They exist behind the scenes. Everyone fears them, but it's not as if they have an office building, a flag, a government post. 

For the purposes of plot, it can be assumed that their power extends as far as Egypt extends. Which means, among other things, that it extends to all those museums and other places where Egypt mania is all the rage. Where the mysteries of Egypt - and, by extension, the cult - influence art and architecture.

Do the civil authorities in Egypt - at this point in time, the British military occupying forces and the Egyptian civil government - know about the cult? Probably. Inasmuch as the cult is active and does things, the authorities will know about those things. They may not have connected the dots and realized that this peculiar murder, or the rise of that politician, are all connected to a power-hungry pro-Pharaoh movement. They know something's up, but not what. Further, there will be some within the civil authority who have connected dots, who suspect much, and are either opposed to the cult or who seek alliance with it for their own ends.

That rival Power opposes the cult's own, and the cult will constantly be aware of it. This limits the cult's overt activities. It cannot expect to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, not without consequences. It can have a man killed, but if that killing is very troublesome for the civil authorities then the cult had better have someone to take the blame, go to trial and perhaps get executed. Otherwise, the political fallout from the killing may upset the cult's plans. 

Of course, all this is before the new Pharaoh steps forward and takes their rightful place on the throne temporarily occupied by Fuad I. The cult will probably be paying very close attention to the career of Mohammed Ali Tewfik, the heir presumptive, but he spends most of his life outside Egypt. Why? Who can say? But he does have a magnificent Cairo palace full of artefacts and practically swimming in history. It's very private, of course; it won't become a museum until after his death. But I'm sure that can be worked into the first story arc. Perhaps that's where the cap of night is now, or perhaps the person who has it seeks an audience with Mohammed Ali so they can sell it to the heir presumptive. Sounds like a job for some plausible go-betweens ...  

Goals: The cult has a hidden goal and an up-front goal.

The up-front is to restore Pharaonic rule. There will be a new golden age of such and so forth. Egypt will once more become the yadda yadda. This is the goal that all the cult members know about. It's the carrot that brings in new members. It's the lure that keeps radicals, Nationalists, Communists and the Muslim Brother hood on board. Work with us, and we'll help you get what you want. Those groups may not have everything in common with the cult but they have one common enemy: the British occupying forces. So long as the cult keeps playing the public game, and drumming up hatred for the British, the more likely it is the cult will get what it wants from those other groups.

There is another way to play this which could be just as interesting. Have the cult ally itself with the British. All the other groups - Communists, Radicals, Nationalists, Muslims - are against it now, but so long as it can keep them fighting each other they'll lack the resources to come at the cult direct. It does mean that player characters cooperating with the British will never know if the policeman, say, or the Colonel they ally themselves with is, in fact, a cult member. Or even a cult leader. 

That's the up-front. The hidden goal is simply this: survival.

The cult remembers all too well the bad old days after the initial collapse, when it was on the run, fearing for its existence. There were a number of times when it might have vanished altogether. Its final shrines vandalized, the last masks smashed or burnt. It has been surviving in the shadows in Egypt for centuries, eating scraps, gathering strength. The oldest among them remember the bad old days and want no more of that, thank you. They would sacrifice every single Pharaonic cult member, every dollar in its coffers, if that meant the cult would survive another day. It knows how to relocate and start fresh. It's done that before. 

That's the old guard, of course. The ancient among them. The newer masks? They quite like luxuries. They like ruling over men. The shadows are comforting, but also an irritant. Wouldn't it be grand to show off their true power? To take center stage? These are masks, after all; they don't feel they truly exist if they're not performing. These are the cult members who will take risks, who will execute the grand plays and come up with power schemes. They don't care as much about survival. They've been fed scraps for too long. Now they want what's on the center table. 

This is a bit different from the average cult in a Cthulhu-esque game. In the typical setting cult members are just a means. Everyone gets fed into the cosmic woodchipper in the end. In the meantime, they work to bring about the return of [insert squid-faced monstrosity here.] This cult is nothing like that. It exists to exist. If there ever was some deeper meaning in its rituals, that meaning is long forgotten. 

Except, perhaps, by the most ancient among them. 

Can you say gerontocracy? Bet you know what that feels like. The old guard might have believed in something once, when they first started out. Now they just believe in holding on to power, for as long as their cold, dead hands can grip.

Assets: at the street level, hundreds if not thousands of willing servants. Everyone from that knife-grinder in the souk to the policeman, the museum curator, the archaeologist, and more. 

They all have their reasons. Some buy into the return of the Pharaoh shtick. Some just like the idea of sticking it to the British (or, alternatively, to the King, the Muslims, the Communists, or whoever). Some join forces for professional advancement or knowledge. After all, who better to know where the best dig sites are than the cult which has been around since forever and who probably built most of those dig sites in the first place? Some just want loot. Whatever the desire, the cult can provide. 

At the not-quite-street level, the youngest of the masks and the mask-makers. The ones who look like Venetian carnival masks, or just Halloween fun times masks. These are the center of any immediate cult activity. If there's a bunch of cult members centered around the local dig workers, then there will be a mask at the heart of it, probably worn by the reis. If the museum curators are in league with the cult, then one of them will be wearing a Harlequin mask. If the staff at Shepheard's are being blackmailed into doing the cult's bidding, then the blackmailer will be wearing a mask.

These masks give some power to the persons wearing them. Think of these as Renfields, if this were a Night's Black Agents game. So long as the mask is on, the wearer gets that power. However, there is a price to be paid. The wearer either has to make a blood sacrifice to keep going, or to give up some of their own life energy to go on. This can mean the wearer dies with their mask on, in particularly dire circumstances. 

Above the street level are the advanced members. The ones who know what's really going on (or who think they do). The ones who are working to bring about the new Pharaonic dynasty. These are highly placed persons and high-powered masks. The masks themselves are probably quite old, if not ancient. At least a century's worth of experience. They might be original Commedia; they certainly date from that period. They were made in the time when the cult was just beginning to reinvigorate itself, to draw on new membership. They don't remember the bad old days, at least not first-hand, but they've heard the old stories time and time and time again. Their loyalty wavers. Perhaps, they mutter among themselves, the time has come for a new direction. 

The oldest among them, the original Gorgons, are ancient indeed. They remember the old days first-hand. These are the ones obsessed with recovering the artefacts that Perseus (whoever that may have been) used to destroy the cult the first time. They realize how fragile life can be. They exist in the shadows. So long as the cult keeps bringing them people to eat, they're happy. These are the only masks with the ability to annihilate a person just by looking at them - the turn-to-stone ability. If there is a whisper of some peculiar theatrical troupe that performs once every so often, for a select audience, this group of masks is at the heart of that rumor. The ancient Roman or Greek theatre, reborn. Except the audience never gets to go home ... 

This final group is the one with real power. They can kill; they have access to ancient knowledge; they can summon up spirits or command mummies to rise. They have in their possession the ancient texts sought after by so many occultists and Tombhounds. They know where the real dig sites are. All they want is to continue to exist. For that to happen, they need to get the relics of Perseus. For that matter, they also need anything else that might pose a threat to them. If it should turn out that some modern artefact, say, has the same potential as Perseus' adamantine sickle then they will want it in their possession, toot sweet. For that reason, they may be very interested in any surplus Great War weapons or sinister death rays that some mad scientist left lying around. If you want to turn the game towards a kind of superhero (or at least super-science) direction, that's the way to do it.  

So! Rome. This is where it's all heading. This cult with its desire to just keep on existing, who plays with making men into Gods. 

Next time, let's talk the first arc.

Moving Goal (posts) (RPG All)

 

Sourced from Ginny Di

I think this is a fascinating idea.

I haven't read the book (but I will). That said, the first thought that popped into my head was, 'this would work brilliantly in Gumshoe.'

Why? Because Gumshoe has Drives. 

The whole system is practically already part of Gumshoe's DNA.  

Altruism: You got into the game to protect innocents from terrorists, or disease, or war, or tyranny. (NBA, Trail)

Thrill-seeker You joined up thinking of Rambo or James Bond. (NBA)

Greed: You know what’s wrong with poverty? Everything. (Bookhounds)

Fraternity Man is born to serve his fellow man, an effort best carried out through collective action. (Dreamhounds)

It was honestly a little surprising to see Gumshoe settings (Mutant City Blues, eg) that don't explicitly have Drives. Even in those, there's usually some reference to Character Concept (a cynical philosopher from ancient Greece, Timewatch, eg) which fulfil the same function but aren't as clear-cut.

But! 

Consider: the Drives system is basically there to encourage roleplay in a certain style. You're Altruistic; that's why you want to go on the adventure. Or down that dark, dank hole. Or this, that and the other. This idea is proposing that you use the Drives system to establish Goals for your character - short term, medium, long - which you, as Keeper, then weave into the narrative. 

Let's say that the drive is Altruism. The player then specifies three goals - short, medium, long - connected with that drive. It doesn't matter what those goals are, so long as they're reasonably achievable and narratively appropriate. 'Destroy Cthulhu' is probably off the menu; 'destroy the Cthulhu cult' might not be. Those goals then become plot.

Remember: conflict creates plot. God knows I've said it often enough. Except here it's the player deliberately creating conflict by saying "this is the kind of conflict I'm seeking out."

Or, as the video mentions, "I no longer need to worry which path they'll pursue because they (or their stated goals) tell me where they're going."

I've talked about Rome and said:

The cultist, the innocent victim, the peculiar item - all those roads lead to one Rome. Make sure that is forefront in everyone's mind.

What does this idea mean for Rome?

It means that, to a certain extent, the players choose what Rome is going to be - or perhaps more accurately, they choose which road they take to get there.

Rome is the end point. It's where all this madness is going. That's the bit that lives in your head until the magic moment when you make your reveal. In the Bookhounds example that I've used before:

What is Rome?

Cthugha

“For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man.”

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

From the Trail main text: Cthugha is a neutral force, a repository of energetic information. The race known as “fire vampires” established their own caches of Cthugha on many worlds, including Earth. Under the guise of the Magi, the ancient fire-priests of the Aryan Persians, they created the Elder Lore of fire-magic, the infrastructure to access Cthugha on our world.

Additional Stability +3 Additional Sanity +1

Keywords: energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic.

I then divided it up by Arabesque, Technicolor and Sordid because those are the three plot types that Bookhounds uses. I shan't go over that old ground.

What I will say is this: if Rome is Cthugha, then this new idea is the road (or one of them, at least) by which you - and the players - get to Rome. 

You already know that there are Four Things connected to everything in the game environment. The Three Bucks Pub, say, is identified by Four Things, and one of them is the Fourth Thing that links to Cthugha - Rome. Same for everything else in the setting. Those are the highlight points and, as I describe in the Many Mansions post:

Four things. Four leads to chase up. At this point you don't need to know a great deal about any of the four beyond the details given above, since the whole point of the ground-level OPFOR is to delay the characters and give them something to think about before the characters encounter the primary movers-and-shakers ...

[ground-level OPFOR] The Rowdy Yates gang of loafers and bullies have a hate for [pick a character] and follow them around like wolves haunting sheep. What is their problem, and is there anything [character] can do about it?

But if there are Four Things and one of those things is chosen by you as the Rome marker, then there are three other things to consider. Under normal circumstances you, as Keeper, would identify those things.

With this idea, what's basically happening is that the player gets to pick one of those remaining Things and make it their own, through their Drives. This, they say, is the Altruistic thing that I shall use to access plot. The In The Blood thing. The Revenge thing. Whichever. For each of those things they define short, medium and long-term goals.

Those goals can then be adapted as one of the Four Things that define, say, the Rowdy Yates gang. Or the Three Bucks Pub. Or whatever.  

You might respond 'but that means dropping one of the things that I designed.' Yes! Yes, it does. So what? Nobody's ever going to know it but you. Moreover, if doing this gets the players to pay more attention to the other bits that you designed, that can only be a good thing. A benefit to the campaign as a whole.

Let's say we were talking about a character defined by the In The Blood Drive, which says:

Quite frankly, you’re not sure why you keep coming back to the moldering graveyard, or poring over those antique texts. But queer behavior runs in the family, apparently. Outsiders wouldn’t understand.

That character then defines, say, a short-term goal as 'I want to honor my family's memory by cleaning up the family tomb.' Fine. Why is the family tomb in disrepair? Because the Rowdy Yates gang has claimed it as a clubhouse. Or using it to store bootleg whiskey. Or one of the gang is related by blood to the character and hates the family connection, so the gang takes every chance it can get to harass the character by damaging the tomb. 

That player goal becomes one of the Four Things that defines the Rowdy Yates gang. This in turn drives the character into conflict with that gang, and conflict, (sing along with me now, folks) creates plot. 

By using that goal to get the character involved with the Rowdy Yates gang, the character then discovers what connects the Rowdy Yates gang to Rome - Cthugha, in this instance. What element of the Rowdy Yates gang links up with the keywords energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic? 

In short, by using Drives as suggested in the Ginny Di piece, you're saving yourself a lot of work by allowing the players to plot out one of the Four Things that you were going to use anyway. You already knew what the Fourth Thing was - Rome - and now you know what one of the other things is. 

You just need two more. 

Easy. Right?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Rome (RPG all)

So, every chance you get, hammer that home. The cultist, the innocent victim, the peculiar item - all those roads lead to one Rome. Make sure that is forefront in everyone's mind.

Where is Rome?

Bearing in mind you need to design this before the first session of the campaign, how much detail does Rome need?

That will depend on the nature of the campaign. I’m going to use Bookhounds in this example, but you can use the same design principles in any RPG setting. 

First, you need to have a clear idea what the end point looks like. Any Cthulhu setting has an advantage, in that there are Old Ones with distinct personalities that can act as the end point. A setting like Ravenloft has a defined endpoint provided in the campaign narrative: the Darklords. Whether it’s Strahd, Mordent’s ghostly Lord Godefroy or one of the many other Darklords, that entity, its plans, and its assets are the endpoint. Cyberpunk has Corporations, the obvious target, but the endpoint could as easily be a corrupt police force, a boostergang, or something else. Vampire’s endpoint could be a particular entity, a group like the Sabbat, the Second Inquisition, or something else. 

Point being every ruleset, every campaign setting, has at least one entity, group or problem that can be used as the end point. Or you could make your own.

Say this is Cyberpunk. Say you want the game to be about a group of scrappy Punks who want to open a comedy club on the edge of Little China and the Hot Zone (hey, rent is cheap). In that case Rome is the finished version of that club, whether finished means ‘the new hotness’ or ‘burnt to a crisp.’ The setting didn’t come up with that; you did.

Once you have that clear idea, you need to flesh it out a little. What does it mean to face off against Arasaka, or to build a new comedy club amid the rubble of a nuclear explosion? If Rome is Strahd, what is it like in a land ruled by a vampire overlord?

To begin, you need to pick some keywords.

You’ll notice in the Bookhounds example below that I pick out specific keywords from the text and expand on each of those, using those keywords as a jumping-off point to describe some campaign-relevant situations. I also divide the situations up by Arabesque, Sordid and Technicolor because those are the possibilities available in Bookhounds and I don’t know, at the start, which of the three the group will prefer. 

Remember when I talked about four things? 

Whether the players are dodging horrors in Cairo or arguing the finer points of literature and history with Shakespeare, it's all vampires, all the time. In the Four Things parlance, vampires are the Fourth Thing.

Using this example as a template then whenever I describe an event, location or NPC going forward, the end point, the Rome, is going to be the Fourth Thing, just as Vampires were the Fourth Thing in the Cauldron. 

So if the keyword is Thus-And-So, and the event/location/NPC fits within that keyword, then that event/location/NPC as Rome in its Fourth Thing slot.

Enough preamble. Let’s look at the example:

What is Rome?

Cthugha

“For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man.”

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

From the Trail main text: Cthugha is a neutral force, a repository of energetic information. The race known as “fire vampires” established their own caches of Cthugha on many worlds, including Earth. Under the guise of the Magi, the ancient fire-priests of the Aryan Persians, they created the Elder Lore of fire-magic, the infrastructure to access Cthugha on our world.

Additional Stability +3  Additional Sanity +1

Keywords: energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic.

Arabesque

From Bookhounds main text: “Baghdad on the Thames.” In an Arabesque London, anything might happen around any corner … Strange conspiracies claim unutterable lineages and vanish with the sunrise; sentient dreams and plausible strangers shake the Investigators’ hands and lives. Arabesque London has mighty temples inside shabby warehouses, underground civilizations, hypnotic detectives, and immortal hidden races.

energetic information: the electric hum of telephone wires carry with it the whispers of the dead; gas lamps can be asked three questions and will reveal three secrets; television, in its infancy, shows a window to another reality.

Magi, the ancient fire-priests: monomaniacal engineers work to create the 1670 airship design invented by Jesuit Father Francesco Lana de Terzi, with the objective of flying beyond the atmosphere, to the stars; bartenders in certain clubs serve cocktails that open the drinkers’ third eye; hidden souls in earthly disguise remain incognito until triggered. 

Elder Lore of fire-magic: the ABC Rail-Guide hides secrets on every page and only the worthy can find them; Daniel Defoe’s Daily Post is still being published, but only for a select audience; there is a 25th book of the children’s 24-volume encyclopedia The Book of Knowledge, which contains peculiar truths.

Sordid

From Bookhounds main text:  London, as Watson says at the beginning of Study in Scarlet, is “that great cesspool, into which the idlers and loungers of Empire irresistibly drain …” The Sordid London is the London of prostitution, drugs, poverty, desperation, extortion, and cruelty. Gross villains whore children to grosser clients; old women die by inches in the gutter while those who step on them curse the inconvenience; self-congratulatory cliques of the “best people” justify their neglect with cant about inevitability.

energetic information: Jack the Ripper is worshipped as a Charon-figure by some policemen, who claim that the worthy are vision-priests of the damned; photographs taken in certain parts of London show more than they ought; drowned men have proven very useful to students of optography.

Magi, the ancient fire-priests: a small group of homeless veterans of the Great War create new butcheries in pursuit of a truth they saw on the battlefield; the wreck of the SS Princess Alice near London’s sewage pumping network spawned a peculiar legend of one who drank the tainted waters but did not die; among students of optography the medical student Arthur Notwood is supposed to be the most knowledgeable. 

Elder Lore of fire-magic: those who go to the gravesites of the passengers of the Princess Alice hear whispers that, when pieced together, have hidden knowledge; the daily log at some police stations – the right log – reveals ghastly truths; opium fiends who take their dose at the site of a recent murder see things that ought not be seen.

Technicolor

From Bookhounds main text: There is another London, garish and glorious. This is the Technicolour world of Hammer Films, in vibrant colour – and the colour is always bright red or lurid green … Technicolour London has more than the eye can encompass: overstuffed bookcases, opulent drawing rooms, rat-infested labyrinthine attics, dripping tunnels of slime-coated stone. Pentacles – and manacles – are lined in silver or some shining metal … 

energetic information: there is a song that echoes through time, which can be heard through stone tape reading; a particular blend of tobacco from an East Indies island nobody has ever heard of gives prophetic dreams; some telephone boxes do not exist entirely in our reality and can be recognized by a peculiar hum.

Magi, the ancient fire-priests: a clutch of cultists who follow a vampire-priest claim to have the secret to reality; military scientists experiment to find a death ray; a group of businessmen wish to harness the powers of creation in their own commercial projects.

Elder Lore of fire-magic: tarot cards owned by dead occultists retain peculiar powers for up to a week after the deaths of their owners; blood can be set aflame and the secrets that the flaming blood tells are not to be spoken aloud; certain tobacconists are not of this reality and one should be very wary of any deal they offer.

Tainted

From Bookhounds main text: A Tainted character is one that has come into contact, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Cthulhu Mythos.

Arabesque: The ones who know are fascinated by technology but it never works as it ought, in their presence.

Sordid: The ones who know sweat blood, in the presence of Mythos items and creatures.

Technicolor: The ones who know prize youth above all things and cannot be apart from youth for long; life is too painful for the old.

OK, let's review. 

I divided into Arabesque, Sordid and Technicolor because that's in the text. I expect that, in session zero, after discussion with the players, one of those three options will have been chosen. In other RPG settings where there is only one option, I don't have to do that. Or there may be different options; Ravenloft, for instance, has several different kinds of horror, and just as with Bookhounds I expect to offer these options to the players in session zero and have them choose which they'd rather have.

Always remember that this is a collaboration; you can't expect the players not to experiment with the main concept. Or anything else, really.

The one thing I haven't touched on so far is the Fourth Thing. The part of the narrative that all roads are leading to. 

Well, we already know that the ultimate destination is Cthugha. Whatever that Fourth Thing is, it has to be related to Cthugha in some way. It seems only fitting that the Fourth Thing be fire. Fire-related, perhaps. The dancing light of blue flame; the way that every spot tainted by Cthugha mysteriously burns to the ground, or how every book written about Cthugha can never burn or be touched by the elements in any way.

Arabesque: Those patterns may look like scorch marks, but they move in a peculiar, hypnotic way. Stare at them too long and you may learn truths; or you may feel your mind detach and float into the never-know-where.

Sordid: Those orphans play with fire not because they enjoy it but because they are compelled to. Every firebug has seen something in the flames. Those arson attacks may not be arson at all.

Technicolor: Every place touched by this evil has a shrine of some kind. That sign of the god with the great green eye might be painted onto the side of a building, hidden in some secret room or tattooed onto the corpse of a sacrificial victim but it is always there. Always.

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.