The Neighbors (RPG All)

I expect you noticed the many articles about Russia’s cyberwarfare section, Vulkan Files, this week.  

This isn’t going to be a cyberwarfare post, though. The post is inspired by a throwaway line in the Guardian’s article. It goes like this:

The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.

Which made me think: how often, in any RPG setting, does the Keeper think about the neighbors?

A lot of settings go into some detail about, say, city blocks, or neighborhoods. Fantasy used to be particularly bad at this. I remember one of White Dwarf’s prize-winning series of articles detailed a city block by block, practically house by house, and while it’s an incredible achievement I could only think, as I read it, ‘there’s absolutely no way I could use this.’

I mean, what would be the point? As DM, you’d never remember half of it. The bits you did remember, you’d never get right. You’d forget stats, or get lost in the maze of text, and be forced to make things up on the fly. 

Swords of the Serpentine and Bookhounds of London are better at this, as is Night’s Black Agents or even D&D 5E. There’s enough detail to get you going, not so much that you get bogged down in minutiae, and you convey the flavor of the setting which is much more important than knowing Boggs the Butcher lives in a tumbledown shack in the middle of Spogger Street and owes money to the wizard Fibble who’s in a sadomasochistic relationship with Dodo the gnome who lives in Quaggoth Street at the bottom of the hill and who experiments in alchemy, supplies for which she gets from Ruin the golem on Dundle Lane. Ruin has a quest for you, by the way. They have a rat problem in their cellar. If you bring him six rat tails … and so on.

But there is some advantage to knowing who the neighbors are. It sets the mood, gives you backdrops for scenes, and sometimes allows for important plot twists. It might be nice to know if, say, there was a rambling old cemetery nearby your Bookhounds’ shop. Or just where they go for breakfast.

Not every setting has an established base of operations for the characters, nor does every genre encourage it. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser never had a home for longer than a few minutes. The only time that duo established a nest it got burnt down a few paragraphs later; after that, they were wandering adventurers – at least until they retired. Your Nights Black Agents flit from city to city in a never-ending quest to rid the planet of bloodsuckers. Dungeons and Dragons invented the murderhobo, point being that they are actual hobos – Kings of the Road. 

Some settings do, though. Some are deliberately located in particular places – Bookhounds of London, Dreamhounds of Paris. Some are a little more broad-canvas but still rely on central locations; most World of Darkness games center the action on one or two particular places. Wraith depends on its Haunts. Vampires don’t like to travel, and even if they do the intricacies of the setting demand that they pay close attention to the territory they currently occupy.

So what does that look like?

First, a couple ground rules.

It’s not all Plot Relevant. The coffee shop on the corner doesn’t have to have Quests. The shopkeeper’s apprentice doesn’t have a Destiny, or at least not one that requires five fantasy archetypes to go on an epic journey in search of the golden sphincter of the arctic wyrm Quixotus.

It’s not all Supernatural. Yes, settings like Vampire assume all sorts of peculiar entities operate in the shadows. It doesn’t follow that every Starbucks is a front for the Camarilla/Sabbat/Mummies/Wraiths/Santa. Sometimes a Starbucks is just a Starbucks. 

It’s not Exhaustive. Don’t name every least business or NPC. Concentrate on the ones you intend to use, even if it’s just as set dressing.

It has a Past. Sometimes that can be fun to play with. 

Finally, Randomize. Don’t feel as if everything has to be meticulously planned. Plans never last long once play starts, anyway. Know where you want to get to; the hows and whys of getting there is determined in play.

Let’s say this is a Bookhounds of London game, and the decision’s been made to have the store in the West End. As per the main book, the West End is:

Although there are poorer streets and plenty of low commerce in this area, the West End represents fashion, wealth, and power. The term “West End” can refer to the whole area of central London west of the City or to a specific set of districts west of Charing Cross Road ...

So already you have a decent idea of the kind of businesses/offices/services might be found in that part of London. You also have five players (in this example), each of whom are busy scheming and daydreaming about their characters. 

Now’s the time to get those players involved. Five questions, one for each player. A sampling:

• What’s the business right next door to your shop?
• What’s the best short cut to get to the street your shop is on?
• Where does your character go for lunch?
• What’s the traffic like on the corner?
• If you needed to raise money in a hurry, who would you turn to?
• Where do you buy tea?  
• Where does the person you crush on work?

I hope you see the pattern. Ask questions that are directly relevant either to the character or the shop. It doesn’t matter if the local amateur FC meets every week in the sports pavilion two streets away if none of the characters have any interest in football. From those questions, devise neighbors.

If this sounds like the Building, well, that’s because it is the Building. Except it’s those parts of the Building that are directly relevant to the characters, and it’s designed in part by the players, not you. Sure, there’s plot involved, but it’s not long-term plot. It’s character plot. Stuff they get up to in their downtime. It's the equivalent of Night's Black Agent's Solace; it's important to the character but has no immediate main plot function.

Put it another way. Agatha Christie wrote murder mysteries, but more often than not there was a sneaky romantic side plot hiding away in there among the corpses because Agatha Christie liked a bit of romance with her exotic poisons. This is your version of that romantic side plot, except the romance is optional.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

What’s the business right next door to your shop? 

Answer: a family-owned laundry, which shares a back alley with the shop as well as frontage. Sometimes we get their mail, and they get ours. The turnaround in the back alley is tight, which can cause problems when their truck is parked too close. After some discussion with the player, you decide between you that the family is the Gerondis, and there are five of them: mother, father, two sons, a daughter.

Finally, the random element. Something not in the players’ control. 

I like using Tarot for these situations. That gives me a hundred or more combinations determined by the cards, not me; more than enough to be getting on with. I don’t need a lengthy backstory. I need something brief, pithy, and useable in a hurry.  

Quick shuffle and one turn of the card later: Death. Straight up.

Oooo.

Death is major arcana, beginnings, change, transformation. OK. That’s now the Gerondi default state. It doesn’t matter when the character encounters them or when they appear in the plot, there’s always something involving change, beginnings, transformation.

Maybe the father is an inventor in his spare time coming up with peculiar gadgets. Maybe the daughter is a romantic falling in and out of love. Or maybe the mother has a love for travel. Or all these things at once; doesn’t matter. Point being, this is the Gerondi default state. No matter when they come up in the narrative or why, something is always changing.

That gives you plot hooks, or at least something to use as a framing piece. None of this has to be plot relevant. This is character relevant, which is just as useful but doesn’t have to involve zombies, magic items, or the ongoing machinations of cults. When in doubt, the Geronidis change, transform, or begin something new. 

That’s the neighbor.

Do this four more times and you have five neighbors to play with. 

That plus your actual plot should be more than enough to keep your players occupied.

Hope you folks enjoy! See you next week.  

Turn of a Friendly Card (Solo Ops)

 

Cards are from Labyrinthos, Golden Thread Tarot

Whether you're a new Director or an old hand you'll have faced this problem; how to structure plot? I mentioned last time I was noodling with some ideas, and here's one: a Three Act Structure based on a Past/Present/Future Tarot spread. 

It's easy for anyone to work out the basics: first card represents what's in the past (behind you), the second what's in the present (beneath you) and the third what to look forward to (before you). There are any number of sites which can tell you what the cards mean; I'm going to use Labyrinthos as a guide.

The advantages are twofold: 

First, it's very visual. You could do this at the table in full view of the player just as the game begins, particularly if you like improv-style games and are good at thinking on your feet. Even if you do the draw in advance and work out the plot in your spare time, you can still lay these cards out in front of the player for added dramatic effect. If you do it this way you can also add in a little extra motivation by letting the player claim a free Push in any given scene in the Act if they can use the meaning of the card as a motivator. We'll discuss how to do that later in the example.

Second, it frees you, the Director, from a lot of potentially difficult decisions because the cards make those decisions for you. It's easy to fall into a rut with your plots, or to suffer brain freeze as you think 'how do I get the agents from A to B to C without making it feel like a railroad?' Using the cards as inspiration, you'll come up with plot ideas you might not have considered before.

This time out I'm only going to talk about the first Act in this three Act structure, but before I do that let's discuss the cards.

We have IV of Swords (inverted) as the Past, III of Pentacles (inverted) as the Present, and The Tower, one of the major arcana, as the Future. What do those cards mean?

IV of Swords: restlessness, burnout and stress, when inverted. From Labyrinthos: Your heart is willing to relax, but this is not what your mind wants. You feel that you have too much that is depending on you. Following this path is not advised, as it could have affects on your health. Very much in flavor with Solo Ops.

III of Pentacles: lack of teamwork, disorganized, group conflict, when inverted. From Labyrinthos: it shows that people are working against each other and undermining the project along the way. There seems to be too much competition between them - each person is trying to display superiority. This results in scarcity of resources - too many people are viewing their project partners as competitors. Very much in flavor, again!

The Tower: disaster, destruction, upheaval, trauma, sudden change, chaos, when upright. From Labyrinthos: The Tower is a symbol for the ambition that is constructed on faulty premises. The destruction of the tower must happen in order to clear out the old ways and welcome something new. Its revelations can come in a flash of truth or inspiration ... The old ways are no longer useful, and you must find another set of beliefs, values and processes to take their place.

No, I did not stack this deck. Random draw, I assure you.

The Three Act Structure is often referred to as the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution. Those are the three things that happen in the order that they happen. You can play with the Structure: for example, you could start with the Confrontation and then reverse time or flashback the Setup. Or you could save a vital part of the Setup for after the Resolution, as a Twist Ending. However to keep things simple this time out I'm going to assume that the three Acts happen in the traditional order and that each card represents the Act.

I'm only going to discuss the first Act this time; the other Acts are for another day.

First Act: Setup, IV of Swords (inverted). This sounds like something pretty significant happened last episode, whatever that was, and the agent is just beginning to recover. If this is your campaign then there might actually have been a last episode, in which case you know what happened and can pick out something from that plot that ties into this one. I'm going to assume for the purpose of this example that this is the first episode of a new campaign with a new character, and that whatever happened in the past is part of that character's backstory. 

Because this is backstory (behind you, the Past) then theoretically it might actually be in the Past, several years before whatever's happening now. It doesn't have to be, and in this example I'm going to assume that it happened immediately prior to the current action.

I like starting with action, so this scenario will start with an action scene. I also bow to the card, which means the agent starts with some kind of stressor (representing burnout). It can be injury, an uptick in Shadow or an uptick in Heat. It might be interesting to let the player pick which they'd rather have; it's always fun to involve the player in their own damnation. In the opening scenario of the Solo Ops book Khan wakes up in a hospital bed, injured, so there's some precedent for this. 

You feel that you have too much that is depending on you. That sounds as if the agent either is in the middle of something important or has something important in their possession which they need to deliver to someone else. The classic McGuffin plot, in other words. 

From Isaac Niemand, Hitchcock's McGuffin

So let's think about what this is all about.

There are various kinds of operations, but since we're already in McGuffin territory and starting with action let's begin with a corpse and a thing. The corpse had the thing, now the agent has it, and it's time to deliver that thing before someone much bigger than the agent catches up with and steps on them.

Lead-in, opening scene: museum, night. Crooked shadows stretch out across the ceiling. The antiseptic air is like breathing pure ammonia; God knows what the cleaners are using but it's powerful stuff, probably to snuff out the sweat and stink of thousands of tourists. Or the stench of ages. Perhaps both. 

Despite this a coppery reek wafts from the remains of your friend and colleague, spreadeagle on the floor and missing their head. No sign where that is. A high-pitched titter tells you whoever did it is still nearby. 

Whoever or whatever they are, they missed something; you can see a card key peeking out from under a nearby display, a short distance from the decapitated corpse's hand. If that's the card key to the Director's Office, then there's still a chance to retrieve the situation. You know, from what your friend told you, where the hidden safe is in that office. You know where the contents of that safe need to be delivered. Time to save the day ...

Lead-Out: This Is Too Easy (alternate, check the room); Race Through the Shadows (core, grab the key and go); Ambush the Ambusher (alternate, try to get the drop on whoever killed your friend).

The intent being to get the agent from this moment in the museum to the director's office with that card key, possibly after some clever maneuvers on their part. The three most likely options are covered. The agent may try to fight, try to flee, or try to investigate. They may want to try other options too; players are sneaky like that. 

Point is, this opening Act sees the agent acquire the McGuffin, encounter a (minor) supernatural opponent, engage in a fight or a chase scene, and eventually leave the Museum with the McGuffin in tow. Depending on the nature of the rest of the Act there may be other objectives, but those are the core objectives.

I shan't go into any detail about the nature of the McGuffin since that will depend on the kind of game you want to play. If this is a Mutant or Alien game with heavy scientific elements, for instance, then the museum will be a Science or Aerospace Museum, or maybe a Military Museum of some kind, and the McGuffin will be important scientific data, possibly historic scientific data. A Damned or Supernatural game would be in a different museum with a different McGuffin.

Once the agent is out of the museum they need to leave town. Like yesterday. They're right in the middle of a murder investigation with all the Heat that implies, for starters, and that's before you consider that the Conspiracy also wants the McGuffin. If the Conspiracy wants it you can bet your last Bitcoin that others want it too. In the Conspiracy detailed in the Solo Ops book there are two flavors of Linea Dracula both of whom will want it, and then there's other spy agencies, potentially third parties like the Vatican - all sorts of sinister forces waiting in the wings.      

The idea is that this opening Act leads into the Confrontation, and since this is a McGuffin plot the Confrontation will either be a fight over the McGuffin itself, or the agent will lose the McGuffin somehow and have to retrieve it again. There should be a decent chance to gain Injury, Heat and Shadow; the agent should leave the opening Act with at least 2-3 points in one or more of those three stats. Battered but not beaten.

The Confrontation is when the Director should really start putting the bite on. 

I mentioned Pushes earlier. The Setup card is IV of Swords (inverted). If the agent can work the meaning of that card into the Push somehow - that is, restlessness, burnout and stress - then they get a Push in any one scene of their choice. 

However if the agent doesn't work that Setup card into a scene somehow then the Director uses it instead, as a customized Blowback of some kind which adds Shadow, Heat or Injury depending on the nature of the Blowback moment. Say, after the tittering killer is somehow dealt with either in an ambush scene or after the chase to the Director's Office, the killer reappears again like a slasher film antagonist, full health and ready for action even if they were weltering in their own blood a minute ago. Or those elongated shadows start preying on the agent's mind - are they still there? What do they mean? The Shadow knows ...

It should be a race to see who claims that Tarot card first. The introduction scene should be a card-free zone but in each scene after that the agent needs to decide whether or not to use it and, if so, how. If they can't think of a way, then the Director might.

That's it for this week! Next week, more Solo.