Learning how to be a better Game Master or Dungeon Master, whether for D&D or any other game, is something anyone can do. You just have to take it one step at a time. ENnie Award-winning RPG designer Justin Alexander walks you through the simple techniques he uses to improve his own GMing.

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Night’s Black Agents is Kenneth Hite’s love letter to spy-fi and vampire horror: The PCs are ex-intelligent agents who have sunken into the cold, mercenary realities of the underworld… and in that underworld they find the vampire conspiracy waiting for them. Whether it’s for salvation or survival, it’s time for them to get back to work.

• Innovative systems for Heat, thriller chases, thriller combat, and spy tradecraft that pivot GUMSHOE’s focus from reactive mystery-solving (“let’s go look for some clues!”) to proactive covert ops (“let’s go make some clues!”).
• The incredibly cool Conspyramid campaign structure, which not only guides the GM to prepping amazing conspiracies, but is also seamlessly integrated into the game’s core mechanics to give the GM everything they need to respond to the PCs as they strike out against the vampires!
• The equally cool Vampyramid, derived from the Push Pyramid from Elizabeth Sampat’s Blowback RPG, which gives the GM a secondary campaign structure in which the vampire conspiracy strikes back against the PCs!
• A robust system for creating completely original vampires, so that in every campaign the players are truly discovering vampires for the first time!

I’m gearing up to run a weekend-intensive campaign of Night’s Black Agents (3 days, 30 hours of gaming), and so I’ve developed one of my system cheat sheets for the game.

WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED

These cheat sheets are not designed to be a quick start packet: They’re designed to be a comprehensive reference for someone who has read the rulebook and will probably prove woefully inadequate if you try to learn the game from them. (On the other hand, they can definitely assist experienced players who are teaching the game to new players.)

The cheat sheets also don’t include what I refer to as “character option chunks” (for reasons discussed here). In other words, you won’t find the rules for character creation here.

HOW I USE THEM

I usually keep a copy of the cheat sheet behind my GM screen for quick reference and also provide copies for all of the players. Of course, we’ll keep a copy of the rulebook on the table, too. (Many of my players also bought PDF copies for character creation, too.) But my goal is to summarize all of the rules for the game. This consolidation of information eliminates book look-ups: Finding something in a dozen pages is a much faster process than paging through hundreds of pages in the rulebook.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive.

PAGE 1: The core mechanics coupled to a list of the Investigative and General Abilities. Being able to rapidly and confidently identify pertinent Investigative Abilities that might be able to pull information out of a scene is pretty much the heart and soul of the GUMSHOE system, so I put these lists front-and-center for easy reference. This page also includes a reference to the Mode symbols, which are used to indicate various options that can be used to dial Night’s Black Agents into a particular sub-genre of spy fiction (ranging from John Le Carre to James Bond).

PAGE 2 – HEAT: I wanted this to be front-and-center for the players. As they do jobs, they accumulate Heat. It’s a significant part of setting tone in a Night’s Black Agents game.

PAGES 3 to 4 – TRADECRAFT: Night’s Black Agents includes a ton of specialized mechanics for running spy tradecraft. A lot of these — like adversary mapping, asset handling, covers, and contacts — are designed to give the PLAYERS tools for proactively sculpting their investigation. So I’ve gathered these from across the rulebook into arguably the most important pages for the players in the whole cheat sheet.

PAGE 5 – TOOLS: Rules for Funds & Acquisitions. Closely associated with Tradecraft, so it gets positioned here.

PAGES 6 to 7 – THRILLER CHASES: Whether running vehicle chases or foot chases, the thriller chase rules for Night’s Black Agents are robust.

PAGES 8 – EXTENDED CHASES: A similar-but-distinct system handles cross-continental pursuits as the PCs attempt to escape the police or conspiracy agents (or both!) trying to hunt them down.

PAGE 9 – COMBAT: This page includes the rules for Recovery, since about half of those are tied to healing those who have been injured in combat.

PAGES 10 to 12 – THRILLER COMBAT: These pages include combat options, the thriller combat rules, and special tactics. Like the thriller chase rules, the thriller combat rules are designed to give the PCs the ability to use their Investigative Abilities to pursue the “investigation by fist” tactics of noir and spy fiction. The half-page section on Trust & Betrayal is also slotted in here, mostly because it conveniently fit.

PAGE 13 – HAZARDS: Everything from acids to toxins.

PAGES 14 to 15 – STABILITY: Night’s Black Agents features a simplified Stability system (compared to Trail for Cthulhu) for handling the mental stresses of dealing with unspeakable horrors. I’m a fan of the optional It’s Cold Outside rules which encourage the players to leverage the Stability system to represent the dehumanizing demands of the spy world.

PAGE 16 – CONSPYRAMID/VAMPYRAMID: One-sheet reference for the GM.

PAGE 17 – VAMPIRES: Vampires can be radically different in Night’s Black Agents thanks to the vampire-creation rules, but my goal with this page is to hopefully give the GM all the general rules they need. When in doubt, though, I err on the side of assuming you can include pertinent details in the stat sheet for the specific vampires you’re running (rather than just choking this sheet full of maybe-if’s).

PAGE 18 to 19 – CHERRIES: A final GUMSHOE innovation in Night’s Black Agents are cherries; special bonuses that PCs get in any General Ability where they have 8+ points. These are all pulled together here for easy reference. (Something which may be confusing is that some of the cherries which are described in the “Thriller Combat” chapter of the book are placed here instead of with the general Thriller Chase rules. I found it was almost always less confusing to have the “only some characters can do this” reference in its own section, and it also made the cheat sheet more manageable in general. I will confess I had one, “Where the heck are the rules for using a mook shield?!” moment before I remembered that it was a cherry and not a general rule. But this quickly sorts itself out.)

MAKING A GM SCREEN

These cheat sheets can also be used in conjunction with a modular, landscape-oriented GM screen (like the ones you can buy here or here).

Personally, I use a four-panel screen and use reverse-duplex printing in order to create sheets that I can tape together and “flip up” to reveal additional information behind them.

I’m still experimenting with the best arrangement of these sheets for my GM screen, but I’ll come back and tell you when I figure it out!

NBA TOOLS
Revised Agent Tracking Sheet

FURTHER READING
Review: Night’s Black Agents
Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet
Review: The Persephone Extraction

It’s your first chance to see what SO YOU WANT TO BE A GAME MASTER will look like on your shelf this fall! It’s the book that every GM, whether they’re taking their first step or just looking to take their game to the next level, will want to own.

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Force your D&D players to immediately start thinking about your scenario and making meaningful choices! ENnie Award-winning RPG designer Justin Alexander reveals the secret technique of using dilemma hooks in your adventures.

ADDITIONAL VIEWING
Surprising Scenario Hooks
Better Scenario Hooks
The Lion, the Witch, and the Scenario Hook

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Go to Part 1

Since writing the Three Clue Rule, I’ve spent just over a decade preaching the methods you can use to design robust mystery scenarios for RPGs that can be reliably solved by your players.

Now, let me toss all that out the door and talk about the mysteries that your players don’t solve. And that, in fact, you’re okay with them not solving!

These generally come in a couple different forms.

First, there are unsolvable mysteries. These are mysteries that you don’t WANT the players to solve. There can be any number of reasons for this, but a fairly typical one is that you don’t want them to solve the mystery yet. (For example, because you don’t want to reveal the true identity of the Grismeister until near the end of the campaign.)

Unsolvable mysteries are easy to implement: You just don’t include the clues necessary to solve them.

The other type of mystery we’re talking about is structurally nonessential. These are mysteries that the PCs can, in fact, solve. They’re revelations that the players are completely capable of figuring out.

But it’s possible that they won’t.

And that’s OK.

In fact, it can greatly enhance your campaign.

It’s OK because structurally nonessential revelations are, by definition, not required for the players to successfully complete the scenario: Knowing that the Emerald Pharaoh loved Sentaka La and arranged for her to buried alive after his death so that they could be reunited in the afterlife is a cool bit of lore, but it’s not necessary in order to complete The Doom of the Viridescent Pyramid.

Note: A corollary here is that structurally nonessential mysteries don’t need to obey the Three Clue Rule (although they certainly can and I’d certainly default to that if possible).

But if it’s a cool bit of lore, why wouldn’t we want to force the players to learn it?

When we, as game masters, create something cool for our campaigns, there’s a natural yearning for the players to learn it or experience it. That’s a good impulse, but it’s also a yearning that, in my opinion, we have to learn how to resist. If we force these discoveries, then we systemically drain the sense of accomplishment from our games. Knowledge is a form of reward, and for rewards to be meaningful they must be earned.

THE POWER OF ENIGMA

More importantly, the lack of knowledge can often be just as cool as the knowledge itself.

An unsolved mystery creates enigma. It creates a sense of inscrutable depths; of a murky and mysterious reality that cannot be fully comprehended. And that’s going to make your campaign world come alive. It’s going to draw the players in and keep them engaged. It will frustrate them, but it will also tantalize and motivate them.

Creating enigma with strategically placed unsolvable mysteries can be effective, but I actually find that having these enigmas emerge organically from structurally nonessential mysteries is usually even more effective:

• What’s the true story of how the Twelve Vampires came to rule Jerusalem?
• How did the Spear of Destiny end up in that vault in Argentina?
• What exactly was Ingen doing on Isla Nublar in Jurassic Park III?
• Who left these cryptic messages painted on the walls of the Facility?

The technique here is simple: Fill your scenarios with a plethora of these nonessential mysteries. (You can even create a separate section of your revelation list for them if you find it useful, although it’s not strictly necessary since you have no need to track them.) At that point, it becomes actuarial game: When including a bunch of these in a dungeon, for example, it becomes statistically quite likely that the PCs won’t solve all of them.

The ones they don’t solve? Those are your enigmas.

In my experience, the fact that these mysteries are, in fact, soluble only makes the enigma more effective. I think that, on at least some level, the players recognize that these mysteries that could be solved, and that invests the enigma with a fundamental reality. It’s not just the GM choosing to thwart you. The reality of that solution — and the fact that you, as the GM, know the solution — also has a meaningful impact on how you design and develop your campaign world.

(Which is not to say that there isn’t a place for the truly inexplicable and fanciful in your campaign worlds. Check out 101 Curious Items, for example. But it’s a different technique, and I find the effect distinct.)

ADDING MYSTERY

In the end, that’s really all there is to it, though: Spice your scenarios with cool, fragile mysteries that will reward the clever and the inquisitive, while forever shutting their secrets away from the bumbling or unobservant. When the PCs solve them, share in their excitement. When the PCs fail to solve them, school yourself to sit back and let the mystery taunt them.

You can, of course, make a special effort to add this kind of content, but I generally take a more opportunistic approach.  I don’t think of this as something “extra” that I’m adding. Instead, I just kind of keep my eyes open while designing the scenario

• Here’s a wall studded with gemstones that glow softly when you touch them. Hmm… What if pressing them in a specific order had some particular effect? What could that be?
• This was a laboratory used by Soviet scientists engaged in post-Chernobyl genetic experimentation. Can the PCs figure out exactly what project they were working on here? And what WAS that project, exactly?
• This Ithaqua cult was founded in 1879. Hmm… Who were the cult founders? How did they first begin worshiping Ithaqua?

In the full context of a scenario, these aren’t just a bunch of random bits or unrelated puzzles. They’re all part of the scenario, which inherently means that they’re also related to each other. Thus, as the PCs solve some of them and fail to solve others, what they’re left with is an evolving puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Trying to make that puzzle come together and glean some meaning from it despite the missing pieces becomes a challenge and reward in itself.

This also means that, as you work on this stuff, you’re refining, developing, and polishing the deeper and more meaningful structure of the scenario itself.

On a similar note, this can also help you avoid one of my personal pet peeves in scenario design: The incredibly awesome background story that the PCs have no way of ever learning about.

This has been a personal bugaboo of mine ever since I read the Ravenloft adventure Touch of Death in middle school: This module featured what, at least at the time, I thought was an incredibly cool struggle between the ancient mummy Semmet and the Dread Lord Ankhtepot. I no longer recall most of the details of the module, but what I distinctly remember is the moment when I realized that there was no way for the PCs to actually learn any of the cool lore and background.

In practical terms, look at the background you’ve developed for your scenario: If there are big chunks of it which are not expressed in a way which will allow the players to organically learn about it, figure out how the elements of the background can be made manifest in the form of nonessential mysteries. Not only is this obviously more interesting for the players, but actually pulling that back story into the game will give the scenario true depth and interest.

If you put in the work, you win twice over. And then your players win, too.

Everybody wins.

Next: The Two Types of Leads

This article has been revised from Running the Campaign: Unsolved Mysteries.