The Man In The Middle (RPG All)

This post comes courtesy of Dorothy Sayers and the Armitage Files.

I've been rereading Sayers over these last few weeks. She's a remarkable talent with a very human writing style. Her views are not mine, to put it candidly, and there are times I have to grit my teeth and bear it, particularly when she starts talking about Jews or any non-white character. Yet she has a knack of showing (not telling) what makes people, people, and that's what draws me in. 

I've also just finished an Armitage Files game, and became intrigued by the setting only to realize I had a copy but had never read it. So I waited until the last remnants of humanity had gone up in a puff of ashes, and then downloaded the .pdf from my Pelgrane shelf. 

The Sayers I've been reading most recently is Murder Must Advertise, in which her aristo sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey puts off the ermine and pretends to be an ordinary citizen in order to infiltrate an advertising agency. He does this because he has reason to believe that someone in the agency is neck-deep in crime, and murdered a fellow employee to keep their nefarious doings secret. 

It turns out this particular nogoodnik is a mere cog in a larger machine, a man in the middle trying to stay afloat in choppy waters. It occurs to me that characters like this get short shrift in most games, which is a shame.

Take Orlando, for instance, whose machinations in the first season of HBO's The Wire kicks off one of the major plotlines of that season.

Orlando's entire value to the organization he works for is that he's a clean face, with no record. He exists, and gets paid, to do nothing but be honest and run a nightclub. Doing nothing is boring, so Orlando wants to get into the game, sell a little narcotics on the side. 

It's that little itch, greed, cupidity, that gets him deep in trouble. 

The Armitage Files, and for that matter the Dracula Dossier and a host of other games, are all about conspiracies and, by extension, organizations. Nothing gets done by doing nothing. If you want to take over the world, you're going to need help. Sure, this means you hire a lot of people with guns, magical knowledge, what-have-you. Troops. Mooks.

It also means you hire a lot of middle men. Honest fronts. Cogs in the machine.

To borrow a line from Bioshock, somebody's got to scrub the toilets. There are jobs that need to get done, bribes that must be paid, ongoing deals that need to be managed which by their nature don't need some necromancer or armed thug in charge. If your criminal organization owns a restaurant for whatever reason - to launder money, to prepare cannibal feasts, whatever it may be - someone's name has to be on the lease and liquor license. 

In the Wire, Orlando is that middle man. The club is a front for a criminal group, but the club still has to appear honest. So they need someone like Orlando. 

In your occult-tinged spy thriller, apocalypse drama, or cold war witch hunt (with real witches), your conspiracy is going to need an Orlando too. Someone who appears honest because they are honest. They're paid to be honest. Being a bland-faced stooge is their whole deal.

In the Armitage Files, much like Night's Black Agents and some of the Pelgrane titles that come after it, NPCs are multipurpose. They might be Stalwart, which means they're against the dark powers that threaten to consume the world. They might be Sinister, which means they're working with those same dark powers to bring about the apocalypse. Or they might be Innocuous - exactly as honest and naïve as they seem. 

I propose this: even if they are Innocuous, that doesn't mean they're Innocent. They could be Middle Men. They don't realize that the messages they pass on every other month are actually related to a sinister conspiracy. That the newspaper clippings they've been told to collect are some kind of occult code. That the purchases they make on behalf of their benefactor are actually helping to bring about the End of the World.

Further, like Orlando, they may not understand that the things they do to benefit themselves - like branching out into a new line of business - might anger their backer. Until it's too late, of course.

I don't want to use any of the Armitage Files NPCs as an example, as that might spoil something for someone. Ditto Dracula Dossier. However, Double Tap has some useful Cameos that won't spoil anything for anyone, so let's have a shot at the Building Superintendent.

Branko

Conceal 3, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 2

It’s not that Branko is a bad man, he’s just apathetic. Always wearing a stained sweat suit, unshaven, and reeking of  Gitanes and cheap slivovitz, his building slowly falls apart around him. But he’s been super in this building for a while, and he’s seen the neighborhood change … and not for the better. (Cop Talk, Intimidation, Negotiation)

At this point I could detail his role as a Sinister or Stalwart character. Maybe the occultist up in the penthouse seems like a Crowley-esque supervillain, but Branko down in the basement is the one holding the strings. Basically, a Casablanca set-up except Sam's the one who really own's Rick's. Or maybe Branko's operating a one-man war against vampires, and his super's office is stocked full of Banes and Blocks. 

However, that's not Branko's role today. 

No, Branko is a Middle Man. That means he's exactly as Innocuous as he seems, but he has his uses and the powers that be are manipulating him, for whatever reason. It could be something relatively simple. His name's on a lease, or he's signatory to a bank account that is of interest to the Conspiracy. But it's more fun to play with the set dressing.

Let's say that this is a Night's Black Agents game with Supernatural (or Damned) vampires, and that this particular game has a significant occult element. Branko might be getting an extra something every week to maintain a shrine out in the graveyard, or to bottle ghosts and deliver those bottles to the empty apartment up on the second floor, or to buy a particular foreign language newspaper and cut out all the obituaries, pinning them to a notice board in the apartment house lobby. Branko doesn't know what he's really doing. He's just going where he's told to go, wave a seemingly harmless bottle around for a few minutes, put a stopper in it and bring the bottle to somewhere that as far as Branko knows is normal.

Of course, if he gets bored one day and doesn't bother to wave the bottle around as he was told, but just sticks a stopper in it and takes it up to the empty apartment, that could lead to unfortunate consequences for all concerned. Especially Branko. 

Or, let's say Branko gets to talking with some nice, plausible player characters and they ask him what he's doing. He has no reason to hide. He tells them everything. He even lets them come along and watch as he waves the bottles around in that spooky alleyway he was told to go to. It's all a big game to Branko. 

It's not a game to the Conspiracy. 

In Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, the murderer is also a middle man. This middle man is effectively a messenger, passing on information about narcotics shipments. He knows, roughly, what he's doing and why, but he needs the money. 

This is a little different from Branko, in that Branko might not know what he's about. Branko might be a complete stooge. Murder Must Advertise uses a different kind of middle man, someone who understands what's at stake and may not like what he's become, but is too far gone to do anything about it. 

Orlando in the Wire is in a similar predicament. He knows exactly what's going on, but boredom and hubris get him into trouble. He could have kept making easy money and that would have been fine for everyone - but no. He wants what he can't have.

Using Branko again, let's say that Branko is that kind of middle man. In that case, he's not going to be talking to plausible agents, not unless they can guarantee him immunity from prosecution. He's still as Innocuous as he seems, but he's just too compromised to be entirely comfortable in his role. 

As to what he's up to, well ... let's say that the apartment on the second floor is used by Conspiracy operatives as a killing floor. They lure targets back to the apartment and butcher them, taking the bodies somewhere else to be dumped. 

Branko isn't directly involved either in the lure or the corpse clean-up. However, the Conspiracy pays him a stipend every month to keep an eye on the apartment and report back to them if the cops, or anyone else, starts poking around. Maybe he's been asked to deep clean the place a few times. Maybe he's had to find a new bed mattress after the old one got ... stained. Or throw some shoes and dresses into the building's furnace.

So now Branko knows more than is good for him. He doesn't have the full picture, but what he does know could get him into a lot of trouble and he's scared. 

Technically that leans more towards the Sinister side of the ledger, but Sinister carries with it the implicit assumption that the NPC will take action against the PCs if threatened or given adequate cause. That's not a middle man's role. No, a Branko will fold under pressure. He won't harm anyone. He's the guy who, in the Interrogation scene, says 'you don't understand. They'll kill me if I talk!' Then, just as he's about to spill his guts ... blam! Bullet to the head. Or explosive device, or what-have-you.

Middle man = walking, talking, Clue. Possibly a Core Clue, but in any case destined for a bad end. With Stability losses for all concerned.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Top Cop (Mutant City Blues)

I've always had a soft spot for Pelgrane's superpower cop setting Mutant City Blues, but I could never make it work.

In my head it sounds like a cross between Powers and The Wire. Particularly The Wire; there are actors in that show - Michael K Williams, Seth Gilliam, Lance Reddick - that I have seen elsewhere, but have never seen give finer performances than in HBO's crime epic. I'd like to think their characters would feel right at home in Mutant City.

So with that in mind let's talk a little bit about what makes this setting function, and to do that we're going to spend some time dwelling on film noir.

In this kind of campaign, the city is just as important a character as any of the players. More so, because the city was there before them and will be there long after they are dead and dust. In The Wire we see small parts of that bigger picture, when McNulty and Bubbles school Shakima Greggs about Omar's cousin No Heart Anthony, or Prop Joe talks about how the house he lives in is one of the first available to black families in that neighborhood. These stories go straight to the long term history of the setting, hinting at a bigger universe that the individual characters are often blind to, so focused are they on their own problems.

At the same time we can also see where the city is going. The whole of Season Two is dedicated to that idea. In that season we see how the docks which once made Baltimore a premier port city, and which fired up the blue collar union workers that kept the docks running, are being beaten to death by forces beyond their control. No matter how bitterly they fight, their defeat is almost inevitable - and in fact they guarantee it by making alliances with drug kingpin the Greek, taking his money to fund a docks revival, but only ensuring that when the deal comes to light the union, last defender of the docks, gets shut down.

Every city has these stories. It's like watching the march of advancing armies, or following the spread of trade across a map. Superficially things seem the same, yet over time the changes become more and more apparent until finally all you can see are the changes. Oddly enough it may be more useful to use a different system, like Microscope, to plot out this city history, particularly if you're not too keen on doing a lot of research. [for an actual play version of Microscope, look here.] But the point is that there is a larger story playing out around the characters, and that story takes decades - centuries - to complete.

To give just one example, consider MV Empire Windrush, the ship that gave its name to an entire generation's emigration to the UK in general and London in particular. This shifting migration pattern is an event whose consequences can have far-reaching effects for your campaign; you could base an entire story arc around something like this. Or consider the Syrian refugee crisis now, and ask yourself how much more challenging it would be if even a tenth of the people incarcerated in holding camps or swept from crisis to crisis had super powers.

Which brings me to my next point: that in film noir the world is ambivalent, and often thoughtlessly cruel.

People we think of as heroes or protagonists seldom win outright. They may prevail, but there are casualties. Moreover the alleged heroes often lack heroic characteristics, or are so deadened by their experiences that they no longer care.

My go-to film, the one I point at as the perfect example of film noir, is On Dangerous Ground with Robert Ryan. There's one scene in particular that gets me again and again: this one, where Ryan's cop corners a stool pigeon early on in the film and makes him talk. That look on Ryan's face - disgust, anger, despair - is distilled cruelty, but it's difficult to say whether that cruelty's inherent in his character or something that's been stamped into him over time.

If you want your Mutant City game to stand out, that's the standard to aim for. The city, and by extension the game world, does not reward kindness. Soft hearts and do-gooders get ground up in this city, and well-meaning projects meant to make a difference sputter into nothingness, leaving only a sense of futility behind.

Again, The Wire Season Two: there isn't a single person in union boss Sobotka's crew who doesn't want what's best for the docks and the people who work there, yet everything they do only hastens the destruction of everything they care about. Even the gangsters don't get what they want; in Season One the Barksdale Crew is set up as the one to beat, yet over time the Barksdales crumble not because the cops win but because the Barksdales lose.

Yet finally, there is hope. Again I turn to On Dangerous Ground. About a half hour in Ryan's character is cornered by a co-worker, after Ryan's beaten yet another suspect half to death. "How do you do it?" Ryan screams. "How do you live with yourself?" To which the other cop replies, "I don't. I live with other people. This is a job like any other. I do it the best I can. It's never enough, but I still do it."

That's the payoff. The city is a main character, yes. It will be there after the characters have come along, absolutely. But if the characters surrender, if they let circumstance and misery grind them down until nothing's left, then they've lost. The battle isn't to control the city. It's to control themselves, to find some satisfaction in the work and in life. Otherwise the only thing they have to look forward to is nothingness.

I've not spent any time talking about super powers, even though this is a super powers game. That's because it isn't the powers that make this setting work. It's a police procedural first, a supers game second. You shouldn't worry too much about the super side of things; that will take care of itself. What you need to concern yourself with is the police procedural, and I hope this post will help you do that.

Enough from me this week. Enjoy!

Nodes, Glorious Nodes (Night's Black Agents)

If you're a Director planning out your first Night's Black Agents game, you may begin to wonder just what these Node things are that make up the Conspyramid. The main book goes into some detail, but ultimately doesn't tackle the question of what makes up a Node. Instead it focuses on what a Node does: provides protection, income, or blood, for the most part. It also provides some examples of potential Nodes, such as banks, human trafficking rings, local gangs, and so on. All of that's great, but the Director may wonder how to inject some personality into these skeletal creations. Otherwise the average Node is just a two dimensional punching bag for the players to smack on.

When discussing Bookhounds and the story arc, many moons ago, I mentioned the importance of the antagonist, using Sarah Montgomery and Stanley David Fentiman as examples. I went on to point out that, to be useful, an antagonist needs to have power, at an appropriate level for the setting and their function in the plot. I touched on Fentiman again when discussing Villains, using him as an example of villain design. In that example, I posited that the Director should decide what a villain wants, what the villain's prepared to kill for, and other background points.

All of which is a preamble for the point I'm going to put to you now: a Node should be treated no differently from a Villain, for the purposes of campaign design. A Node should have power to affect the plot. A Node has things it wants, things it's in charge of, things it's prepared to kill for. A Node has personality, and it's up to the Director what that personality ought to be.

Probably the best example of a Node in modern television fiction appears in HBO's crime drama The Wire, Season Two. Frank Sobotka, played by Chris Bauer, is a low level Node in a larger criminal conspiracy. That conspiracy is involved in human trafficking and drug smuggling on the Baltimore docks, and it needs Sobotka, or someone like him, because Sobotka, through his position as secretary treasurer for the local Stevedore's Union, can help them get their goods through Baltimore's docks without attracting attention.

Sobotka knows very little about the greater purpose of the conspiracy. He doesn't care to know, because if he did, he might have to rethink his position, and he needs the money the conspiracy provides to revitalize the docks and secure the long-term future of his union friends. He's also trying to keep his family clear of the conspiracy as much as possible, but thanks to the recklessness of his son Ziggy, that isn't as successful as he'd like.

Already we're beginning to see what makes this Node successful, as a character within a greater story. Frank doesn't have a lot of power. He can't sent hordes of faceless assassins or attack helicopters off to strike at his enemies. But he does have enough power for his role in the plot, as a go-between. He has enough power within his Union to arrange for some minor harassment and obstruction of the protagonists' efforts. He can call on more significant muscle through his links with more important Nodes in the conspiracy.

However what makes him really effective as a Node isn't the power he can exercise, but his personality. He has goals that go beyond his role in the conspiracy. He has connections - his son Ziggy, his nephew Nick, the power brokers he's trying to bribe to keep the docks alive - that complicate his life and keep him from getting what he wants. All this is important, if you want a Node to be effective within the narrative.

Note that this is a different thing from being effective as part of the Conspiracy. It could be argued that Frank's effectiveness within his Conspiracy is relatively low, but that doesn't make his story less interesting. Never forget that you're not designing a Conspiracy, but a story, and this story isn't about how wonderful or powerful the Conspiracy is.  It's about how the Conspiracy falls.

So what does make up a successful Node? Well, given the example, in order to be successful a Node would need:

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

So let's design a Node from the ground up.

Let's make this one a level 3 Node, at the Provincial level. So it has a certain level of authority and importance, but isn't in charge of group policy. Let's make it part of the Conspiracy's income streams. In fact, let's make it a private bank, one of those staples of spy fiction. It operates out of somewhere like Switzerland or France, and rather than have it a centuries-old institution like Coutts or Landolt & Cie, let's make it a little more modern, and pattern it after something like NBAD Private Bank (Suisse). Banks like these exist to hold other people's assets, and do so discreetly. In NBAD's case it's wholly owned by another banking group, the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, but we can assume that, if our Node is wholly owned by another group, that group isn't part of the Conspiracy. It has been corrupted from within, so only a few of its top people are actually aware of its role within the greater Conspiracy.

A bank of this type is often fairly small. Rothchilds, for example, employ a little over 1,600 people, while Warburg has only 1,230 employees. It often has several offices, spread over a large area. Warburg's base is in Hamburg, but it also has offices in Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Zurich and Luxembourg,. That suggests that the total number of employees in any one office is probably small, perhaps less than a hundred. You wouldn't need to corrupt more than one or two senior people to have control over an office, and that office probably supports a level of business out of all proportion to its size; millions at least, if not billions of euro.

As a private bank, it is run by a partnership, and again, this will be a small number of people, each of whom have power according to the size of their holding within the company. Again, the conspiracy will only need to corrupt one, perhaps two partners to have significant control over the Node.

With all that in mind, we have Bankhaus Klingemann, of Bonn. Established 1956, this institution is a post-war re-consolidation of three pre-war private banks, all of which failed as a result of losses incurred during the war. The assets that had become valueless were disposed of, while the assets that still held value were kept. At the time of its incorporation it was suggested that the Bankhaus was established not because their predecessors had failed, but in order to launder assets held by former Nazi elite. These rumors have, of course, been denied repeatedly over the years by the partnership, of whom Joachim Klingemann is the senior partner. His son Eric and daughter Lisle are both partners, as are four others, each of whom have connection with the pre-war banks.

Bankhaus Klingemann is an investment bank. It advises its clients how best to raise financial capital, and as a consequence it has its fingers in many different pies all over the world. In its early days it focused heavily on construction and real estate, as part of the post-war reconstruction effort; currently its main interest is 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.

The Conspiracy controls Lisle Klingemann, and one other partner, Albert Ahrens. Through them it controls the Bankhaus' Swiss and Paris offices.

The Conspiracy roped in Lisle thanks to her gambling addiction. In her younger years she was a notorious high-stakes player, known from Macau to Monte Carlo for the extravagance of her bets. Her father always helped her out of whatever hole she found herself in, until one day, on her twenty fifth birthday, he lowered the boom: no more, or I disown you. That was when the Conspiracy stepped in, and offered her a way out. Become one of us, and you can have the power to make people do whatever you want. In return, we expect you to join your father's bank, and rise in its ranks. Rather than give up her lifestyle, Lisle agreed.

Albert was one of her first victims. He'd been Uncle Albert to her, all her life; fat, disgusting Uncle Albert. It was far too entertaining a thought not to make him her slave. He'd bark like a dog if she told him to. However she was indiscreet, and her brother Eric caught on. Not to her new found power, but her relationship with Albert, which Eric sees in an altogether different light.

Since then Lisle's been much more cautious. She needs to be, in order to influence their father, who's much more strong willed than she would have given him credit for. Also, she lacks the technical expertise Eric has in abundance, which makes her less able to talk to software development clients on their own terms.

There are three questions to consider: what is this Node's power? What is its Goals? What Assets does it possess?

This Node's power is financial. It can leverage millions without any effort at all, It maintains several private accounts whose sole purpose is to act as a kind of slush fund for Conspiracy assets. As a consequence of this financial power, it has a certain level of influence in many different areas. Government officials will bend over backwards for a bank able to affect, positively or negatively, the state's economy. Companies who want investment capital will help this Node when they can. Certain industry events or conventions may be funded by the Bankhaus, and so on.

Its Goals are to keep the Conspiracy's financial operations running smoothly. Lisle and Albert have their own Goals, of course. Lisle wants to consolidate her control over her father, and edge her brother Eric out of the partnership altogether. She also wants to gamble whenever she pleases, but she's got to be much more discreet about it these days. Unexplained trips on the company jet may reveal her itinerary. Albert wants to keep Lisle happy, but it's possible that her continued mental domination has awakened certain desires in him that, until now, he's been able to suppress. He may have a collection of Lisle-a-likes kept at private apartments, or be a familiar figure at local BDSM establishments.

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

That's enough to be getting on with, I think. With this information the Director knows enough about the Node to determine what it wants, what it can do, and what it might do when threatened by the protagonists. After that, it's up to the players how things proceed.

Enjoy!