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The Vladaams covertly operate three curse dens in Ptolus. These dens of iniquity feature a rich drug culture mixed with strange curse magicks and gambling.

OPERATIONS

Each curse den is run by a Vladaam Mage assisted by a small team of Vladaam Guards and Advanced Guards. In general, security is light because everyone knows that the Vladaams will respond violently to anyone disrupting their operations: The Balacazars and Killravens might fight each other, but they don’t fuck with the Vladaams.

Hostesses working at the curse dens are commoners (MM p. 345) unless noted otherwise.

The curse dens are overseen by Den Master Marcus Corellius. He’s based out of the Rivergate curse den and is also responsible for crafting curse jewels as required. Notably, he’s officially the holder of the deeds on all three curse dens and also the Slave Trade Warehouse (see Part 16: Slave Trade), with the Vladaams using him to distance themselves from the properties in case anything goes wrong.

Vladaam Guards: Use guard stats, MM p. 347, with AC 17. (Equipment: breastplate, shield, longsword, longbow, arrows x20, potion of healing, Vladaam deot ring.)

Advanced Vladaam Guards: Use knight stats, MM p. 347.

Vladaam Mage: Use mage stats, MM p. 347. See Part 13: Red Company of Magi.

PRICE LIST

CURSES
Curse Globe Rental	1,000 gp
Curse Jewel Rental	100 gp
Slave Rental	100 to 1,000 gp
Psychic Poison	280 gp (cast by Den Master Corellius)
DRUGS
Abyss Dust	1 gp
Agony (Liquid Pain)	200 gp
Shivvel	2 sp
Snakeweed	2 sp

See Part 18: Vladaam Drug Running for descriptions.

CURSES

CURSE GLOBE
Wondrous Item, legendary

A large, crystalline sphere filled with murky, swirling shadows. When provided with a possession, garment, body part, lock of hair, or similar item, a curse globe can be used to remotely curse a chosen individual. The target gets two Wisdom saving throws (DC 18): One to negate the scry-like effect through which the curse is cast and once against the curse itself. If both saving throws are failed, the target is affected as per bestow curse.

A curse globe can be used twice per day, once at dawn and once at dusk.

The original Vladaam curse dens were build primarily around offering the curse globe service and expanded their services from there. They charge 1,000 gp for the use of the curse globe. Due to the limit on their usage, there may be a waiting period before a globe becomes available.

CURSE JEWEL
Wondrous Item, very rare

A flat-cut ruby about three inches across set into an elaborate setting of gold carved with twisted arcane runes. When placed against the bare skin of a victim, the curse jewel can inflict a curse upon them as per a bestow curse spell (DC 15 Wisdom saving throw negates). The process is deliberately painful to the victim and simultaneously creates a pleasurable reversal in the person using the curse jewel.

This reversal acts as an extremely addictive drug (Constitution DC 12, buzz 1d2 days, initial special effect, second effect darkvision 60 ft., Addiction DC 16, threshold 1 dose, Withdrawal DC 16 (exhaustion), recovery threshold 3, Compulsion DC 8). During a buzz, the drug creates a sense of intense euphoria and also reverses the effect of the curse that was afflicted. (For example, if the curse inflicted disadvantage on Strength checks, then the user of the curse jewel would gain a temporary advantage to Strength checks). The eyes of characters who gain darkvision as a secondary effect of using the curse jewel glow a dark, seething red.

Curse jewels are evil items and due to their frequent use in painful, decadent torture, 50% of them have become lightly tainted.

GAMES

The curse dens are not full-blown gambling establishments, but they feature various games of chance and skill as part of their darkly bohemian atmosphere.

BERTRANT: This exceedingly simple dice game involve the roll of three dice. The players always attempt to get higher than everyone else in the game, with special combinations on pairs and triples. Bertrant is mostly enjoyed by those who expect to be drinking heavily while playing and hence do not really need to keep their wits about them.

To resolve a Bertant bout:

1. Advantage Check: Make an opposed Intelligence (gaming set) check between all players. The winner gains advantage.
2. Elimination: When a player with advantage wins advantage again, the player (or players) with the lowest score are eliminated. All players with advantage except the winner lose advantage, all players without advantage gain disadvantage, and play continues.
3. Victory: The last player wins all of the table stakes for the bout.

To resolve an evening of play, roll 1d20:

1d20	Result
1-15	Lose entire stake
16	Lose half stake
17	Break even (keep stake)
18	Win stake +10%
19	Win stake +25%
20	Win stake +50%
21	Win stake x 2
22	Win stake x 5
23-24	Win stake x 10
25-26	Win stake x 20

A character proficient with gaming sets can add their base proficiency bonus to this roll.

DRAGONSCALES: See Ptolus, p. 333 and Addendum: Dragonscales.

SKULLRATTLE: The game of skullrattle features a specially modified dragon skull. A ball of red jade (referred to as the “fire”) is dropped into one of the hollowed-out horns of the skull and falls through a specially constructed pachinko-like mechanism which causes it to shoot out of one of the openings in the skull itself. The final revelation is preceded by a “deathrattle” which emanates from the skull (and is caused by the pneumatic device which propels the fire out of the randomized orifice).

Bets are placed before the fire is dropped into the horn. They are paid off according to the table below (which also shows how the result can be randomized with percentile dice). “Bottoming out” happens when the fire drops entirely through the skull without emerging through any of the orifices.

d100	Orifice	Payout
1-24	Left Eye	4:1
25-48	Right Eye	4:1
49-60	Left Fenestra	8:1
61-72	Right Fenestra	8:1
73-78	Left Nostril	16:1
79-84	Right Nostril	16:1
85-88	Left Mandible	24:1
89-92	Right Mandible	24:1
93-94	Left Fang	48:1
95-96	Right Fang	48:1
97-00	Bottoming Out	No Winners

Other Bets:

• Eye — 1:1 (left or right)
• Fenestra — 4:1 (left or right)
• Maw — 8:1 (any mandible or fang)

Since the game is entirely random, you can use the “Evening of Play” rules for Bertrant, but you do not gain any bonus to the roll from proficiency with gaming sets.

STAFF

Vladaam Guards: Use guard stats, MM p. 347, with AC 17. (Equipment: breastplate, shield, longsword, longbow, arrows x20, potion of healing, Vladaam deot ring.)

Advanced Vladaam Guards: Use knight stats, MM p. 347.

Vladaam Mage: Use mage stats, MM p. 347. See Part 13: Red Company of Magi.

Hostesses/Customers: Use commoner stats, MM p. 345.

DEN MASTER CORELLIUS

Den Master Marcus Corellius: Use mage stats, MM p. 347. AC 13 (16 with mage armor). Proficient with alchemist’s tools.

• Circlet of Persuasion: Advantage on Charisma-based checks.
• ring of protection

Cantrips (at will): mage hand, mending, shocking grasp
1^st level (4 slots): charm person, mage armor, magic missile, unseen servant
2^nd level (3 slots): false life, invisibility
3^rd level (3 slots): sending, summon lesser demons (Xanathar’s),
4^th level: (3 slots): arcane eye, dimension door
5^th level (1 slot): seeming

Go to Part 8A: Curse Den – Guildsman District

 

Andrew Stanton is the superstar creator of WALL-E, John Carter, Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, and many more. In 2012 he gave the above TED talk collecting all the lessons he’s learned about storytelling.

A good story, says Stanton, makes a promise. That promise might be as simple as, “Once upon a time…,” but the crucial thing is that the audience believes that this will be a story worth hearing. The promise, therefore, invites the audience to engage with the story. It’s like a foot in the door. It’s incredibly important because, without that initial engagement (and the trust that comes with it), the storyteller has nothing to build on or with.

The nature of the promise also means that “stories are inevitable if they’re good, but they’re not predictable.” A statement which, I think, can be interpreted in many ways: That we may know where a story is going, but not the path which is taken. Or that we may know the direction of Fate, but not necessarily the specific form it will take. Or that when we look back at the story, it seems as if everything is perfectly aligned and could have gone no other way than it did, but we could not have foreseen it.

In other words, the story must faithfully keep its promise, but it should still surprise and delight the audience.

(For more on how you can achieve this effect in an RPG, check out Random GM Tip: Three Point Plotting.)

The promise also creates a window of opportunity for the storyteller, and they have to capitalize on that by making the audience care about the story.

There are many ways a storyteller can do this — character, theme, craft, etc. — but one particular lesson he talked about leapt out to me as a Game Master:

THE UNIFYING THEORY OF 2+2

The absolute best way to get the audience to care about the story is to get them involved with the story; to get them actively thinking about the story. And the best way to do that is to make them work for the story.

In other words, don’t show your audience FOUR. Show them 2 + 2 and make them do the math.

Note that 2 + 2 isn’t difficult. The point isn’t necessarily to challenge the audience. (Although it can be: There’s a reason why the mystery genre is popular. A properly placed insoluble problem can actually be even more effective, which his why everyone remembers the end of Inception.)

The point is that even the simplest act of connecting the dots engages the audience. It makes them, on a primal level, a part of the story. They are thinking about the story and they have opinions about it. Once you’re part of something, you care about it. As Stanton says, “A well-organized absence of information pulls us in.” We have a desperate need to complete an unfinished sentence.

Take Citizen Kane, for example. (Spoilers ahoy!) Imagine how much less effective would that movie be if, at the end of the movie, Orson Welles had Joseph Cotton’s character say, “Rosebud was his childhood sled. Despite the poverty and the hardship of his youth, he must have always missed the simple, uncomplicated joys of his youth and the unconditional love of his mother.” The beauty of Citizen Kane as a movie is, in fact, the immense artistry Welles employs so that, rather than spoonfeeding that moral to the audience, he has prepared the audience so that all the nuance and emotional complexity of that idea becomes as simple as 2+2 when he shows them the image of the sled.

(I’ll note that this can actually create paradoxes in storytelling, where sometimes the more effort you spend explicitly and plainly explaining something to the audience can actually result in the audience understanding it less, because the lack of engagement causes them to mentally skim past it.)

And it’s a “unifying theory” because it can apply to almost everything in a film: Characters, plot points, exposition, etc.

The trick, of course, is that the audience wants to work for their meal, but they usually don’t want to know that they’re doing that. So it’s also the storyteller’s job to hide the audience’s work from the audience.

To use our Citizen Kane example again, when you see the sled at the end of the movie, you don’t consciously think, “Oh! A tricky problem! Let me think this through!” Ideally, the storyteller has set you up so that you simply see 2+2 and reflexively think, “Four.”

(Again, there are exceptions, like the central conundrum of most mystery stories.)

IN YOUR GAME

Stanton, of course, is talking about animation and filmmaking, and we know that we can’t just take the same storytelling techniques that we see on screen and use them in our RPG games. RPGs are a different medium; one in which the players have an unprecedented freedom and for which plots should not be prepped.

But the Unifying Theory of 2+2 still works!

All you need to do is give your players the equation and then left them take the final step.

In fact, the interactivity of a roleplaying game can actually enhance the technique because the players can actively investigate. In a film, the audience has to passively receive the equation, but in an RPG, the players can go looking for the twos. Or maybe they have the twos, and they need to experiment to figure out the correct mathematical operator.

(I think I’ve broken the metaphor.)

Matryoshka techniques like matryoshka searches and matryoshka hexes are built around this idea that “completing the equation” will mean taking action as a character, and that doing so can give the player both ownership and control over the answer we find.

For other techniques you can use to help make your players care about your campaign, check out Random GM Tips: Getting Your Players to Care.

Let’s say that you want to skip over a large chunk of time in your campaign.

Actually, let’s back up for a moment. It’s possible that the idea of skipping time has never occurred to you. Much like dungeon scenarios can condition us to resolve everything one action at a time (much to the detriment of sequences run outside of the dungeon), so, too, can other scenario structures and situations trap us in a pattern of resolving every single day as if they were all of equal importance and focus.

When combined with the XP systems in D&D, for example, this can easily create a hyper-compressed narrative where the PCs are getting out-wrassled by giant rats one day and slaying Zeus a couple weeks later. But even without those kinds of advancement mechanics, getting stuck in a cycle where every day is jam-packed with adventure can be very limiting in the kinds of adventures you run and the scope that your campaigns are capable of.

(Conversely, some campaign structures and concepts can make it completely appropriate to remain laser-focused on the problem at hand. That’s just fine. I’m just pointing out that there are other options.)

It should also be noted that players are often motivated, for any number of reasons (including their own rote habits), to fill every day to the brim with stuff they want to do. So if you want to decompress the campaign a bit, you may need to push back against that impulse and/or incentivize taking realistic breaks from the breakneck action.

For example:

• Leveling up in D&D might require more than just XP. You could introduce a rule that in order to gain a level, PCs must spend a period of time training. (This period could be set to almost anything and you could justify it: A fortnight. One week times the character’s new level. A cycle of the moon. One full season. A year and a day. Whatever.)
• Mysterious dames with suspiciously missing husbands don’t show up on the doorstep of the detective agency every single day. Once the PCs wrap up their current case, there’ll be a fallow period of humdrum work until the next exciting adventure lands on their doorstep.
• The vampires are hunting them and the only way to get the Heat off them is to lay low for a while… maybe a long while.
• Yes, they’re adventure archaeologists: But now that the Spear of Destiny has vanished into vaults beneath the British Museum, there’s a lot of research to be done before they can identify their next expedition. And you can’t rush research!
• In Ars Magica, the projects and research performed by the wizards take one or more seasons to complete. The cycle of play, therefore, is broken down into season-long turns, and the wizards can generally only undertake a single adventure during each season as well.

On the flip side, it’s quite possible that the players will, without any kind of structure or prompting, want some downtime for their characters for any number of reasons.

Which ultimately brings us back to: Let’s say that you want to skip over a large chunk of time in your campaign…

SKIPPING TIME

First, determine how much time is passing before the next scenario is triggered (or whatever will signal the end of the skipped time). The amount of time may be obvious given the reason you’re skipping time in the first place, or it might just be an arbitrary decision on your part. (Or maybe you randomly determine it; e.g., 1d6 months.)

Regardless, frame things up by simple stating the period of elapsed time: “Three months pass.”

Next, go around the table and ask each player what their character did during that time. When it gets to your turn, as the GM, you inject event(s) that you want them to react to and/or develop the actions they’ve described.

In practice, the players will build off each other’s actions and the events you provide, weaving an interconnected narrative. You may also find it useful to:

• Play out short roleplaying vignettes.
• Use simple skill checks or similar mechanics to determine specific outcomes.
• Allow the PCs to use other mechanics (like downtime, research, or project mechanics) to advance their interests (or set things up for the next adventure).

But this isn’t strictly necessary. In any case, you want to make sure you don’t get too bogged down. You’re looking for a relatively high level of abstraction possibly coupled to a highlight reel. Don’t get sucked back into day-to-day logistics.

You can do just one pass around the table, but I find it’s often better to split the time up into three chunks. (Or, if you’ve got a certain number of events for them to respond to, an equal number of chunks.) Each additional pass gives the players more opportunities to weave their stories together and develop their own characters.

Your first instinct might be to have all the chunks be of the same length (e.g., we’re skipping three months and we’re doing three passes, so each pass will be one month long), but I often find it more effective to make each chunk progressively longer:

• “One week has passed. What has Charlotte been doing?” (go around the table)
• “Another month has passed. Where are you now?”
• “Now it’s July. What did you spend the last two months doing?”

The advantage of this progressive sequencing is that it allows the players to be fairly precise in their immediate reaction and follow-up to the dramatic events of the most recent scenario, and then slowly transitions them to thinking in the longer term.

You may or may not want to frame the final pass along the lines of, “In December, you all meet again in London. Tell me how you get there and where you meet.” (In other words, prompt the players to pull it all together and position them for the next scenario.)

EPILOGUES

The Eternal Lies campaign for Trail of Cthulhu by Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, and Jeremy Keller uses a similar technique to provide a satisfying epilogue to the campaign.

If you’re wrapping up a dedicated campaign, it’s likely something that you’ve spent weeks, months, or even years playing these characters. A big, satisfying conclusion to the campaign is great (and a topic for another time), but even after the conclusion, you want to give space for loose threads to be wrapped up and for the players to say goodbye to their beloved characters.

There are many ways to handle this, but one powerful and flexible method is to cue up a time skip… just without returning to game play on the other side.

• Where are you one week after the campaign ended?
• One month after the campaign ended?
• One year after the campaign ended?

The exact periods of time you choose for each pass will depend on any number of factors — the characters, the nature of the campaign, whether you’re planning to run another campaign in the same setting, how big the fallout from the campaign’s conclusion is likely to be, etc.

This technique can be particularly cool in historical campaigns, because you can relate the time skips to the passage of real world events. For example, if you were running a Fall of Delta Green campaign in the ‘60s, you could skip forward all the way to 2023 and discover where the characters would be today.

In some cases, you might want to drive all the way forward to the characters’ deaths. But that usually won’t be the case: To live is an awfully big adventure, and there are many forms of closure far more satisfying than the Grim Reaper’s icy grip.

ADVANCED EPILOGUES

As you’re prepping to run your epilogue (whether using the skipped time method or not), you should look back at the totality of the campaign and think about:

Unfinished Threads. It would be great if every single loose thread in a campaign was neatly tied off, but that’s usually not what happens. Real life can be messy, and so can the lives of our characters. Particularly in the big drive to the campaign finale, it’s likely stuff will get left unresolved.

For example, in my Dragon Heist campaign, one of the characters had a driving motivation to figure out what had happened to her mother. For one reason and another, however, it had never been prioritized during the campaign. (Neither by me, her player, nor the character herself.) This made it a perfect target for the epilogue.

Themes. What were the major themes of the campaign? These may have been planned. They may have emerged through play. (Quite probably both.) Either way, try to pull these themes into the epilogue. In some cases, themes may even have a resolution.

Characters. What members of the supporting cast were particularly memorable or important? Make sure to pull these characters into the epilogue and give them a sense of closure, too.

This will likely include mostly allies, but it’s not unusual for an enemy or two to still be hanging about. What happens to them? What’s their legacy?

Rewards & Consequences. The PCs fought hard to achieve things. (Or maybe they strived and failed.) Along the way, there were probably prices that had to be paid. Cementing those costs and payoffs and consequences in the epilogue is a way to invest the events of the campaign with even greater meaning.

It’s one thing to save a village. It’s another to see all the children growing up who would never have lived if you hadn’t.

Whether your TTRPG campaign is D&D, GURPS, Blades in the Dark, Infinity, or Call of Cthulhu, you’re going to be playing these characters for weeks, months, or possibly even years. Shouldn’t you take the time to get it right? ENnie Award-winning RPG designer Justin Alexander shows you how he gets all of his campaigns off on the right foot.

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In Night’s Black Agents, the PCs are retired intelligence agents. Maybe they left willingly; maybe they’re ex-pats on the run from their own governments. Regardless, they’ve been putting their skills to use as mercenaries, doing whatever jobs their consciences can live with in the gray and black markets of the world.

And then they discover that vampires are real.

In fact, there’s a vast vampire conspiracy. It’s infiltrated (or has begun infiltrating) every corner of the modern world, feeding the murderous hunger of the undead.

Which, of course, means that — even as their minds reel from the sanity-shattering immensity of this revelation — the agents must dust off their skills one last time and save the world.

It’s not like anyone is going to believe them, after all.

In large part, Night’s Black Agents is driven simply and entirely by the immense erudition of Kenneth Hite, whose mastery and appreciation of both the espionage and vampires genres is vast. Even more impressive is Hite’s success in boiling his knowledge down onto the page and making it effortlessly accessible to you.

Sure, you’ll benefit mightily from flipping to “Sources” on page 207 and at least sampling the array of vampire and spy fiction that Hite recommends. But the point is that you don’t need to, because Hite has packed all that lore into this remarkably thin rulebook in the most practical and useful ways possible. With nothing but Night’s Black Agents in hand, you will be able to dial in everything from James Bond to John Le Carre; from Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

THE GUMSHOE SYSTEM

The GUMSHOE system was originally designed by Robin D. Laws explicitly for designing and running mystery scenarios. It’s been adapted into a dozen different games over the years, and Night’s Black Agents isn’t even Hite’s first rodeo. (He previously designed Trail of Cthulhu.)

The central conceit of the GUMSHOE system is that it divides all of the PCs’ skills into Investigative Abilities (e.g., Cryptography, Electronic Surveillance, Accounting) and General Abilities (e.g. Athletics, Gambling, Shooting), both of which have pools of points which can be spent by the players.

While General Ability tests are resolved by rolling 1d6 + the number of points spent vs. a difficulty (which generally defaults to 4), the GUMSHOE gimmick is that you never need to test Investigative Abilities: If you are in a scene where a clue can be found using a relevant Investigative Ability and you use that ability, then you gain the clue. (The points for Investigative Abilities can be spent, but only for various enhancements to the action. You never need to spend or roll for a core clue required to solve the scenario.)

I have some quibbles with this gimmick: First, the claim is that it eliminates the risk of the players failing to find and follow a clue! But that’s not actually true. They can still fail to look for the clue and, if they find the clue, they may still misinterpret it. You can mitigate these problems somewhat with point spends, but the solution ultimately ends up being the Three Clue Rule. And if you’re using the Three Clue Rule, then you don’t actually need the “you never roll!” gimmick to begin with.) Ironically, the claim that it’s magically solved the problem can actually exacerbate the problem at some tables.

Second, this system can create some very nasty hard limits in play: The plethora of pools creates a multitude of limited resources, any one of which the PCs can unexpectedly and catastrophically run out of in ways that can completely derail scenarios or result in horrific TPKs.

A sufficiently savvy table, however, will be able to get a general feel for how scenarios need to be paced in order to work, and later GUMSHOE games have found ways to soften the hard limits. Night’s Black Agents, in particular, is festooned with a cornucopia of systems designed to flexibly replenish pools and route around the hard limits.

And despite my reservations, I’ve consistently found the various GUMSHOE games I’ve played and run deeply satisfying. A large part of this seems to be the skill lists, which are all built on the same chassis while varying somewhat game to game, and are universally excellent for investigation scenarios. This is paired to a character creation procedure which systemically divides these skills evenly among the PCs, neatly setting things up so that spreading the spotlight around during investigation scenes is a seamless and virtually automatic process.

Character creation also features a handful of other features that efficiently flesh out characters and motivate them for investigation. In Night’s Black Agents, this includes backgrounds (quickly orienting players into the milieu of the game), drives (directly motivating the characters), and sources of stability (which define people, places, and ideologies that are significant to the character and then ties those things to the dehumanizing themes of the spy genre).

The result is a system that’s not only good at the table, but also fabulous during prep.

CONSPYRAMID & VAMPYRAMID

The heart of Night’s Black Agents is the Conspyramid, a campaign structure/recipe that the GM can use to reliably create an effective conspiracy for their campaign.

The core concept is that the conspiracy is broken down into nodes — sources of blood, funding, and protection; cults, institutions, infrastructure, front companies, and so forth — and these are arranged into a pyramidal structure and then connected to each other:

For example, in this sample Conspyramid, agents investigating the Ganymede nightclub might find leads pointing them towards the Abkhaz gangs or the renfield H. Volov. Similarly, those investigating Volov would find connections to Istanbul Customs and the S.S. Paradine. The idea, of course, is that the players will work their way up the Conspyramid to the core leadership at its pinnacle and then burn it all down.

What makes the Conspyramid sing in actual play, though, is how Hite has broadly integrated it into the other mechanics and structures of play.

The simplest example of this is that the default difficulty of relevant tests is equal to 3 + the row of the Conspyramid. So, for example, Infiltration tests to break into the Ganymede will default to difficulty 4, but if you’re trying to break into the Hungarian Interior Ministry (up in row 3), the tests would generally default to difficulty 6. A key word here, of course, is “default,” but the overall effect is that the stakes of the campaign will naturally escalate as the campaign continues — the players will feel the pressure and the difficulty as they climb the conspiracy’s ladder.

A more complicated example are the adversary mapping mechanics. Here the basic concept is that the PCs will use Human Terrain, Traffic Analysis, Surveillance, asset interviews, ops, and other relevant abilities and actions to discover how the conspiracy is organized (i.e., the links between nodes). What’s really cool is that Night’s Black Agents is designed to empower the PCs to create their own ops: Once you’ve identified the Ganymede on your adversary map, do you place it under surveillance, interrogate the owner, put a tap on the computer servers in the basement, or just burn it to the ground and see who collects the insurance money?

The agents’ adversary map will not always precisely match the GM’s Conspyramid, but the Conspyramid gives the GM everything they need to respond flexibly and confidently to the agents’ investigation no matter what form or direction it takes.

The players are also mechanically incentivized to build out their adversary map because the more links an op has, the more bonuses they’ll receive when staging an op with that node as their target, thus encouraging a slightly more contemplative style of play in which the PCs figure out how stuff is connected before choosing how and where they want to strike.

Perhaps the most significant integration with the Conspyramid, however, is the Vampyramid, which I consider the other pillar of a Night’s Black Agents campaign:

Although superficially similar to the Conspyramid, the Vampyramid, based on the Push Pyramid from Elizabeth Sampat’s Blowback, is a structure for running the active vampiric response to the agents’ actions. Each tier of the Vampyramid is “unlocked” as a result of the PCs targeting one of the nodes on the corresponding tier of the Conspyramid. The GM then selects an appropriate response, following a “path” up the Vampyramid.

For example, let’s say that the PCs hit the Ganymede nightclub, make a copy of the server hard drives, and then destroy the data center. This unlocks Tier 1: Reflex on the Vampyramid, so the GM scans through their options and decides Offer Payoff is the best fit:

OFFER PAYOFF: Some seemingly unconnected node of the conspiracy offers the agent a handsome payoff to walk away… This also offers the players a clue to another node of the conspiracy.

So we need to grab another node from our Conspyramid: We could go up the Conspyramid, perhaps having someone from Lisbon Import-Export, LLC approach the PCs. But at this early stage of the campaign, it might make more sense to stay lateral, so maybe we grab a rep from the Szegeli Clan to make the approach.

Since the PCs grabbed the data and slagged the servers, it probably makes sense if the conspiracy wants that data back. In fact, they might even assume that the PCs are just blackmailers. “We know you made a copy of our data. So how much do you want?”

However the PCs turn that approach to their advantage, we can assume they continue mucking about in their investigation and maybe they eventually track things back to the Dagestan Militia. That node is on the second tier of the Conspyramid and it unlocks the corresponding tier of the Vampyramid. Looking at the pyramid, the GM can just follow the arrows to find “the most natural escalations.” The idea is that, depending on which initial node you select, you can chart a course up through the Vampyramid in a process that creates great complexity and variety from a surprisingly simple structure.

Our chosen example, however, does reveal one structural drawback of the Vampyramid: Once you hit one edge of the Vampyramid, you end up “locked” into a single chain of response actions. (Offer Payoff, for example, connects only to Kill Enemy.) In practice, this is ameliorated because the Vampyramid is designed as a tool, not a straitjacket: You can always skip to a completely different node or improvise a custom response if it’s more appropriate for your campaign. You can also always return to the bottom tier and initiate a new response path.

Regardless, the Vampyramid provides a simple, default scaffolding that makes the Conspiracy a living, breathing entity that’s actively opposed to the PCs and reacting to their operations. It’s also, as we can see in the Offer Payoff example, yet another mechanism Night’s Black Agents uses to dynamically introduce clues into the PCs’ investigation. (The game is simply excellent at making it virtually impossible for the PCs to ever dead-end.)

The tight integration of the Conspyramid with the rest of the game can also be seen in the system for Heat.

The Heat mechanics provide a model for how much pressure the PCs are under from the authorities as a result of their actions: Did they kill someone? Did they blow up a building? Did they kidnap the daughter of a vampire scion? Did they get involved in a massive car chase through downtown Lisbon? All of these actions will generate Heat, and once per operation the GM can call for the players to roll against their current Heat level.

If the roll fails, some sort of official interference will crop up during the op. That might be the CIA agent who’s been tracking them catching up and ruining their cover stories. Or a SWAT team raiding their safe house. Or “a whole fleet of cop cars joining the chase.”

Notably, getting rid of Heat generally requires the PCs to either skip town (pushing their activities into the international scope of cinematic espionage films), make a deal with someone in power (further entangling them), and/or staging some kind of op (creating exciting game play). So this is yet another example of Night’s Black Agents using simple systems to dynamically generate complex and rewarding play.

But the other thing to really take note of here is how all of these different elements are put into motion and swirl around each other: The PCs are actively investigating the conspiracy’s infrastructure (Conspyramid), the vampires are actively trying to shut them down (Vampyramid), and the cops and other official agencies are getting drawn into the vortex (Heat). The ops generate Heat and unlock new tiers of the Vampyramid; the Vampyramid creates situations which draw Heat and introduce clues for tracing the Conspyramid; and Heat can either trigger responses from the Vampyramid or force the PCs to diversify their investigation into the Conspyramid.

This isn’t just a random assortment of resolution mechanics. It’s an engine that generates espionage and drives the campaign forward.

THRILLER RULES

With Heat and the two Pyramids driving the action, Night’s Black Agents packs even more action into GUMSHOE with the Thriller Rules, a selection of optional mechanics that are designed to evoke the espionage genre. These include:

• Thriller Chases
• Extended Chases
• Thriller Combat
• Special Tactics

The rules for Thriller Chases provide a robust, but not overly complicated system for resolving either foot or vehicle chases. The Extended Chase system sounds like it would be an add-on for Thriller Chases, but it’s actually a completely separate system for handling scenarios where the PCs are fleeing from trouble across multiple countries and is tied into the Heat system.

The Thriller Combat rules are designed to patch up the major problem with using GUMSHOE as the engine for an espionage action game: Combat in GUMSHOE kinda sucks.

The problem ultimately boils down to the core math of the combat system: You roll 1d6, add the points spent from the General Ability you’re using to attack (Hand-to-Hand, Shooting, or Weapons in Night’s Black Agents), and compare it to the target’s Hit Threshold. Hit Thresholds are almost universally between 3 and 5 (although some supernatural creatures will exceed those limits), so you can hit your target even if you don’t spend any points, but obviously you can improve your odds (or even hit automatically) if you do spend points.

From the player’s side this is very simplistic, but mostly works. They have a limited pool of points that likely needs to be stretched across multiple combat encounters in a scenario, and so they need to strategically decide when and where to spend their points. (This is largely a binary choice, though: If you’re going to spend points, you’re almost always going to want to spend enough for an auto-hit.)

The big problem is on the GM’s side of the screen. NPCs are built to have roughly the same range of ability ratings that PCs do, which means they also have a similar number of Hand-to-Hand, Shooting, and Weapons points to spend. But the NPCs don’t need to stretch their points across multiple encounters and usually don’t have a variety of targets to prioritize: They can spend two or three points on every single attack, automatically hit the PCs every single time, and almost certainly never run out of points before the encounter is finished.

In practice, this means that the GM can make one of three choices:

1. Automatically hit the PCs every time. (Providing a flat and ultra-lethal combat experience. In fact, you’ll almost certainly TPK the group in any fight where the PCs don’t dramatically outnumber the opposition.)
2. Never spend ability points for NPC attacks. (Another flat experience, and one in which there’s no difference between tussling with a random street thug and the ultimate battle with Dracula.)
3. Just arbitrarily decide when the NPCs will hit the PCs. (Which kinda negates the entire purpose of having a combat system, and still doesn’t mechanically reflect NPC skill, but is probably fine if you’re the sort of GM who likes stuff like railroading and fudging.)

I’ve run a lot of GUMSHOE and, frankly, the combat system is fundamentally broken. Its only saving grace is that it’s just barely functional enough that you can sorta just coast through the occasional combat encounter. It’ll be vaguely bad and unsatisfying, but not game breaking.

Okay, but the Thriller Combat Rules are ostensibly designed to fix this, right? So do they pull it off?

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but… No.

They do their best, but ultimately can’t route around the fundamental mechanical flaw. What they can do, however, is add a lot of fun options to the fight that can distract the players from the unsatisfying core mechanics and keep them entertained.

All this flash and bling, however, does highlight another slight tarnish in the system, which is that there seems to be a handful of minor mechanics scattered throughout Night’s Black Agents where the math just seems wonky to me.

Take called shots, for example. Useful mechanic to have for a vampire game (where you may need to stake them in the heart), but one of the generic effects is a damage boost. Check this out, though: Aiming at either the Heart or the Throat is +3 Hit Threshold, but hitting the Heart does +3 damage while hitting the Throat only does +2 damage, so you’re obviously always going to pick the mathematically superior option every time.

(It should be noted that these wonky bits are so minor in nature that, in practice, it’s quite difficult to spot them. But if you’re the sort of person who would put together a comprehensive cheat sheet for the game, they will pop out at you.)

What does make a big difference in Night’s Black Agents combat, though, are the Special Tactics. Tactical Fact-Finding Benefits (TFFBs) and Tag-Team Tactical Benefits (TTTB) both give the players (a) a channel for using their Investigative Abilities to gain tactical advantage in combat and (b) methods for the PCs to collaborate with each other and form mechanically impactful tactical plans on the battlefield. They’re flexible, powerful, and very satisfying to use.

VAMPIRES!

The final trick Night’s Black Agents has up its sleeves is an incredibly robust system for creating custom vampires.

These aren’t just palette swaps. Hite provides an almost overwhelming variety of options drawn from across world mythology and vampire fiction, strapping them into a modular system that can combine them fruitfully into an almost infinite variety of forms. This system is, in fact, so robust that it can be trivially adapted to creating supernatural foes of any type.

More importantly, this means that every time you start a new Night’s Black Agents campaign, the players will be legitimately in the dark about exactly what form the dark, vampiric threat will take. Every campaign is an exciting journey of discovery and revelation.

CONCLUSION

Night’s Black Agents takes the rock solid investigation mechanics of the GUMSHOE system and enhances them with Thriller Rules and Special Tactics that can flip the reactive investigations of Christie (“let’s look for the clues they left behind!”) into the explosive investigations of Fleming (“let’s blow stuff up and make some clues”). It then marries those mechanics to the tripartite espionage engine of Heat, Conspyramid, and Vampyramid.

The result is an RPG that’s not only delightful to bring to the table, but also a truly unique experience.

The core concept of “secret agents hunting vampires” is also surprisingly perfect in its conception and execution. When first pitched, it can seem almost random, but the more you think about it (and play with it), the more it seems not only utterly natural, but also inherently awesome.

It’s worth noting, though, that Night’s Black Agents is a fantastic RPG for even a mundane espionage campaign without a trace of vampiric action or supernatural conundrum: Drop the Vampirology ability and, on the player side, you’re just left with secret agents. On the GM’s side, the only potentially thorny issue is the Vampyramid, but that’s mostly just the name. (In a pinch, you could even grab the Push Pyramid from Sampat’s Blowback and plug it in.)

This is largely because, as I mentioned before, Hite is so effective at boiling down the huge breadth of not only the vampire genre but also the espionage genre into the game in a shockingly practical fashion. Truthfully speaking, either genre would be capable of supporting an entire game in its own right, and to have both so perfectly blended together in Night’s Black Agents is the gaming equivalent of possessing the riches of Croesus.

(Who, infamously, has no reliably recorded death, and is, therefore, almost certainly a vampire. Feel free to use the Lydian conspiracy for your first campaign.)

But I digress. The point is that removing the vampires from Night’s Black Agents nevertheless leaves you with a comprehensive and fully realized espionage game capable of handling everything from James Bond to Jason Bourne to George Smiley. In fact, Hite will help you dial in the subgenre of espionage you want with different modes of play:

• Burn games will focus on the psychological damage and personal cost of the spy game.
• Dust games eschew cinematic excess and instead dial in the gritty realism of The Sandbaggers or Three Days of the Condor.
• Mirror games feature the deception and betrayal of the spy game, where corrupt agents and agencies pursue ends that justify the means until, finally, they forget what the ends were supposed to be.
• Stakes games, by contrast, will shine the spotlight on the high ideals of espionage, where the fight really is about protecting the ideals, nations, and people that you believe in.

Through the Night’s Black Agents rulebook, symbols associated with each of these modes clearly mark various options and advice that you can use to dial in exactly the style of espionage campaign you want.

I offer this as the conclusion of this review because I think it speaks deeply to Kenneth Hite’s philosophy as a designer and to what Night’s Black Agents offers you as a game: Hite wants to give not only the GM but also the players everything they need to make the game that they want, and he achieves that by loading you up with a truly astonishing array of tools, options, and information. He doesn’t just dump this material on you, though. Instead, it is meticulously organized, designed, and implemented to make it as easy as possible for you to use it. Everything is designed to effortlessly empower you.

Night’s Black Agents comes bearing gifts.

And you should invite it in.

GRADE: A+

Designer: Kenneth Hite

Publisher: Pelgrane Press
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 232

FURTHER READING
Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet
Review: The Persephone Extraction
System Cheat Sheet: Night’s Black Agents
Untested NBA: Funding