A Handful of Dust [Night's Black Agents]

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Here's a redesigned Night's Black Agents sheet put together for a theoretical future continuation/restart/completely new Delta Green campaign I'd like to do sometime in the future.

The basics:

• It's set to DUST mode, so Health is capped at 10 and your starting General Ability points are 55. MOS rules do not apply, and characters only gain access to 8+ abilities marked with the Dust icon—Athletics (Hard to Hit), Hand-to-Hand (Eye of the Tiger), Medic (Medical School of Hard Knocks), Shrink (Talk It Out), and Surveillance (The Wire).

• It's also set to BURN mode, so your Stability is capped at 12, and your Network points are group-size dependant.

Other rules variants that apply:

• The Dunwich Sanction: Cthulhu Mythos is in and Vampirology is out, so characters have Sanity to lose too. Also added: Fringe Science, Geology, Physics, and Theology. Because this is nominally for a Delta Green campaign, the Bureaucracy General Ability rules from Martini, Straight Up are also in, as is the Pulp-idiom Hypnosis from Trail of Cthulhu.

• Special Assets gives us Necrophony (called Medium because I like the old-school Spiritualist sound of it) and Clairvoyance under 'Paranormal General Abilities.'

• And from Rough Magicks, we add the Magic General Ability, too.

The Flames Lit Up The Night

the ghosts were howling in the late afternoon

we were singing along to the same old tune

Alongside Mage: the Ascension, the other White Wolf game I keep revisiting my purely hypothetical plans for is Vampire: the Requiem.

Unlike the my dissatisfaction with the Ascension to Awakening transition, I think Vampire really benefits from the local, ground-level focus Requiem brought. The limits on cosmological buy-in and supernatural history don't just give you greater mechanical freedom in building your own little corner of vampiredom, it ends up foregrounding your world-building decisions on the street level. The first questions you ask aren't how the local Sabbat relates to Montreal or Mexico City, or whether the Tzimisce elder has a pew reserved in the Cathedral of Flesh, but whether your city even has a prince or not… or even other vampires. It's a different kind of game when biggest monsters on the block are your player characters.

As much as I like it, though, that doesn't stop me from wanting to mess with it even more:

• No Clans: Vampires are vampires. There is no global culture of vampirism which gives names to different lineages, and no recognition of a broader vampiric genealogy beyond the immediate sire-to-spawn relationship… if that's even there.

Bloodlines exist as very specific permutations of vampirism, whatever vampirism is.

Mechanically speaking, this means that new characters may purchase Disciplines from the following list as 'in-clan' Disciplines: Celerity, Resilience and Vigor.

The rest of the regular Disciplines may only be taken, at the cost of an out-of-clan Discipline, if they're 'unlocked' by choosing one of three clan weaknesses some time before Blood Potency 3. This represents a 'transitional period' between vampires who are just physically more powerful than humans and becoming weirder, more alien creatures of the night.

When the weakness is chosen, one of the previous Disciplines at a rating of one or zero dots may be un-selected as an 'in-clan' discipline, and an 'unlocked' Discipline selected as 'in-clan' in its place.

Mekhet weakness: Auspex, Obfuscate, Majesty
Nosferatu weakness: Animalism, Nightmare, Obfuscate
Ventrue weakness: Animalism, Dominate, Majesty

• Don't Scare The Rubes: You will note the lack of Protean on the above list of Disciplines. Aside from the Nosferatu weakness, and the potential for blood magic, there's no really outré Vampire powers on the table for young vampires.

• No Covenants… Well, Except For These Guys: The Ordo Dracul works well as a multinational, long-term conspiracy because it has a job to do and the indoctrination framework to perpetuate itself. Likewise, the idea of a secret vampire religion, passed down through the ages as an addendum to the faith they professed as a mortal makes sense due to mirroring the parasitic nature of the vampire itself. As the vampire is a tick on the hide of human culture, so is its vampirism-warped culture.

So the Order exists in a more-or-less similar form, and the Lancea Sanctum and the Circle of the Crone are there as amorphous themes for local iterations, some of which might even use covenant terminology. The Invictus and the Carthians, however, are absent.

That doesn't mean that Invictus and Carthian behaviour isn't there, though. Thematically, the two poles provide the Gothic (as in, feudal) and Punk (as in, anarchist) halves of the vampire equations. Practically, any region which has a vampire population large enough to have a Prince, Alpha or Boss also has enough vampires to look for alternative ways of divvying the blood up.

Mechanically, this all means that Covenant affiliation and the mechanical benefits of such are only available to vampires in large cities, unless a smaller city or town has a secret cult of vampires dedicated to perpetuating the secrets of vampire-specific knowledge (like Cruac, Theban Sorcery, the Coils, or a particular weird discipline/rite).

• Vampirism is Weird: This is where bloodlines come in. Vampires, as they get older, get weirder, so there's bloodlines running around doing weird bloodline things. The rules aren't any different, except that the prerequisite clan is changed to dots in the clan's primary discipline (except for Protean, which is replaced with Animalism, making Gangrel bloodlines a little more broadly available). Anything that has Protean-like transformations are out, though.

Also, many of the extreme versions of clan powers and weaknesses available in the clan books are present, especially Nosferatu blossoming flaws and Necropoli, the Malkavia virus, Hollow embraces and Mekhet shadow cults.

• Stuff is Weird: Vampires share the world with psychics and mortal sorcerors, as well as monsters from Predators and Antagonists, like funky Azlu/Beshilu/vampire hybrids, zombies, imbued, the Thief, the Hunger, and whatever crazy weirdness I think is cool. I'm not sure if I want supernatural societies out there, as opposed to just things, but I'm not totally opposed to a small conspiracy or two if it seems fun.

• Maybe Martin: I'm drawn to giving every vampire who doesn't take the Nosferatu weakness the No Fangs flaw. That, more than anything else, should give the campaign a unique feel. It forces the players to make a very literal decision to embrace monstrosity or find a workaround that keeps them 'human.'

I turned to my brothers

to look them in the eyes

there was ash

ash falling from the sky

The Ascension Will Not Be Televised

Question: If Control's control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control needs time.

A conversation on G+ led me to a few days of thinking about how I'd actually approach a Mage: the Ascension campaign. I regret never getting the chance to have a real go at a campaign back in the day, and the regret of reading so much of it but playing nothing is a fishhook that tears in a little more every year.

Anyway:

• The Technocracy 'Won.' Characters would be a multi-disciplinary amalgam acting as 'Reality Cops,' tracking and neutralizing cognitive deviants and other threats to maintaining Consensus. The timeline of missions depends on the nature of the threat: a large-scale social movement requires a similarly long period of investigation to get to the root, while a folie a masses requires simply locating the centre of the delusion and eliminating it. Multiple missions would be ongoing at one time.

• Cosmology: Ghosts In, Blue Öyster Cult Out. While the Wyld-Weaver-Wyrm trinity makes a good allegory for the dynamism-stasis-entropy thing, having the rest of the regular Umbra in there and Werewolf's shamanism-centric spirit realm seems a bit much. The Dark Umbra is probably all that's necessary; abstract concepts, if someone wants to interact with them on a direct-metaphorical level, may be primordial ghosts shorn of any identity save their Passions for some platonic ideal. The Labyrinth and Yomi give you the possibility of Lynch-dungeons without making the Other World obviously a better place to hang out. Pocket dimensions or fragments of some previous, nicer Other World might still be floating out there in the Tempest—so a multi-dimensional home for Control isn't out of the picture.

All this means that the Void Engineers are going to be fairly different. They might be more focused on theoretical frontiers in quantum physics, or attempting to reach

• Tradition Structure: The Same, Except Where Different. In this version, 'Traditions' and 'Adepts of Hermes' are synonymous. The nine (ten?) Sphere organizational schema, and the associated seats at the Council, were filled by representatives from each House, arch-specialists in that particular Sphere. Most of the sub-traditions in each of the other Tradition's writeups (the Shi-Ren, the Li-hai, Vajrapani, Wu Lung, Children of Albi, Nashimites, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera) exist or existed as independant, discrete groups, not recognizing any affinity with other groups with similar Sphere affinities. The Hermetic Tradition saw these as ignorant dabblers and dangerous cultists, and either sought to police them the way the Technocracy does now or re-indoctrinate them as a member of their appropriate House. Between the Hermetic Tradition and the Technocratic Union, these other cabals may have recognized other persecuted magical societies as co-belligerents, but they were too dispersed and different to actually cooperate long-term.

This means many of the metaplot-heavy factions (Ksirafai) might not be recognizable from the splatbook versions. And, the Technocracy may have developed from a splinter-conspiracy of Hermetic adepts or a Cabal of Pure Thought outside the Council mainstream. (Either way, it's not like it's going to put that in the briefing dossier, is it?)

Now, of course, the Hermetic Traditions lack either the physical Chantries they meet in, or the population density to make a structure necessary. The distinction between a small-d dreamspeaker and a House Whatever Spirit mage are now irrelevant, unless the Adepts still have some sort of communication network going.

• Weird Stuff Is Weird. There's plenty of demons, vampires, and all the stuff from the Book of the Wyrm that you can throw at the Technocracy. It's an open question whether the Ascension War was them most important front in the fight for Consensus.

• It's The End of The World. Going in, it should be understood that the campaign is about the ultimate fate of humanity, and will eventually feature everything getting pretty crazy. Whether the ultimate fate of humanity includes the Tapestry in the equation will be part of the choices made.

Unfortunately, if you're reading this and getting all excited, I have way too many other things to do right now than give this the time it needs. Mr. Elkins has also been talking about a game that will probably resemble this campaign frame closely, at least in the beginning.  

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control? 

Answer: Yes

Night's Black Agents — dust settles on old bones

Here's an optional rule for Night's Black Agents to really bring out that old-boys'-network le Carré flavour.


OLD BONES
In addition to the 55 General Ability points characters start with under the DUST rules, characters who start the game fifty or older gain bonus General Ability build points, depending on their age:

Character's Starting Age	Bonus Points
50-59	5
60-69	10
70-79	15
80+	20

These bonus points may not be spent on Athletics, Health, or Hand-to-Hand. In games which also use the BURN rules, spending bonus points on Stability is also prohibited.

Bonus points spent on Network and Sense Trouble, however, are doubled.

Today In Things I Am Doing Other Than Writing Blogs

Wrangling some layout stuff for Pelgrane and Fire Opal's 13th Age.

The Place Where Black Stars Hang

Here's a random colony generator, for those times when you just have to violate human biology in a new and exciting place.

[A] [B] on a [C]. It is under the control of [D], and currently facing a threat from [E]. 

A — Quality
1: Failed, seemingly-empty
2: Violently divided
3: Understaffed
4: Ramshackle
5: Fully-functional
6: Overtaxed

B — Function
1: Mining colony (Examples: gas-mining balloons, seismic power station, mobile helium-3 extractor, unusually non-automated labyritnth deep in the planet's crust)
2: Industrial colony (Examples: raw-material refinery, semi-automated factory, repair facility with massive drydocks, bio-manufacturing centre, junk/salvage processing centre)  
3: Agricultural colony (Examples: vat-farms, luddite primitives, oxygen farm)
4: Settlement (Examples: terraforming homesteader community, refugee camp, splinter sect, mutant colony, crash survivor camp, squat)  
5: Outpost (Examples: listening post, expedition base, refueling station, isolated laboratory)  
6: Fortification (Examples: pirate port, rebel base, military storage facility, forward defensive position, prison)

C — Planet Type
1: Noxious, volcanism-shattered magma planet. (Examples: Io, Mustafar)
2: Hazy, cloud-wrapped storm planet. (Examples: Venus, Titan)
3: Arid, wind-carved desert planet. (Examples: Mars, Arrakis)  
4: Grey, primordial, grit-choked rocky planet. (Examples: LV-426, Fury 161)
5: Brackish, fungal swamp planet. (Examples: Dagobah, primordial Earth)
6: Glacially-encrusted ice planet. (Examples: Europa, Pluto, Hoth)

D — Who's In Charge
1: A governor appointed by an absent power.
2: The owner of the colony; a prospector, corporate head or aristocrat.
3: A combined council of the heads of each segment of the colony's operations.
4: A strongman who rules by force and fear of force.
5: Elders, headmen or leaders by popular esteem.
6: [Reroll twice for separate factions, adding another reroll each time a 6 comes up.]

E — Threat
1: Unexplained phenomena such as ghostly apparitions, or disappearing things and people. (Or appearing things and people.)
2: Illness or disease of the inhabitants, or other essential life-forms.
3: Unusual or suspicious behaviour among the colony personnel, or suspicion of unusual behaviour, or unusual suspicious behaviour…
4: Equipment malfunctions. 
5: External assault from outsiders, or giant bugs, or giant bug outsiders.
6: A natural disaster—this is Ceti Alpha V!

Risable Pursuits

Procrastination is the mother of invention, and I'm never more inventive than when what I should be doing is what I'd normally do to procrastinate. Therefore, here's some unplaytested, probably horrible, very likely subconsciously plagiarized rules for Risus: The Anything Game.

These adjustments are of the 'serious Risus' sort, the kind which slightly disincentivizes Hairdresser vs. Sorceror combats and other symptoms of the High Gonzo Mode in favour of an action or "pulp" mode (whatever that means these days).

All of these variants are based on the big important variant.  

The One Risus Errybody Variant: Instead of adding the total dice together to compare against a difficulty, a roll is counted as a success if any of the numbers on the die match. In combat, the winner is the one with the largest number of matching numbers, including multiple sets of matches (e.g. two 2s and two 3s all count as four matches).

If the number of matching dice is a tie, then it goes to (in descending order of trumps):

-Whoever has a Dramatic Success (see below).

-Whoever is using their Expert Cliché (see below).

-Whoever has the most of the same matching number (e.g. four 2s beats two 5s and two 6s).

-Whoever has the higher matching number (e.g. four 3s beats four 2s).

-Whoever rolled the most dice. If none of these tiebreakers are present, then both lose.

Rolling for matches roughly approximates the probability of a 3d Cliché (Professional level) rolling against a difficulty of 10, "A challenge for a Professional." This, then, is the baseline difficulty for any roll. Because of the probability breakdown, though, the Whiff Factor is slightly higher than in regular Risus.

Increased difficulty may involve either a target number of matches, or a penalty die.

- Target number of matches: Remember the minimum match target is 2, so increased matches will have to be 3+. Keep in mind the dice pool of the character rolling so that you don't inadvertently set it at an impossible difficulty. This way is actually a slightly more punishing difficulty than dice pool penalties (see below), since it basically knocks out successful matches instead of just reduces chance of making them in the first place.  

- Penalty die: Subtract a die from the pool based on increased difficulty based on the Target Number Scale chart:

"5: A cinch. […] Routine for a pro." +1
"10: A challenge for a Professional." = 0
"15: An Heroic challenge." = -1
"20: A challenge for a Master." = -2
"30: You've GOT to be kidding." = -3

This is, basically, the same as how the damage system works. Since the lack of granularity in this system can quickly reduce dice pools to a useless 1 or 0, overcoming difficulty will usually involve either Pumping, Teaming Up (see below) or finding tools which provide bonus dice. GMs should actively reward character effort to gain advantage from their environment, and should try to prep with an eye toward how difficulties might be modified one way or another.

Teaming Up is slightly different in this version. I'm not sold on any of the ideas I have for handling it, so here's the options.
- Team Leaders roll normally; secondary characters add only matches which also match the the numbers of the Team Leader's matches. (e.g. Team Leader Mok rolls two 2s and two 4s and Participant David Bowie From Labyrinth rolls two 5s and two 4s. Only the two 4s from Participant David Bowie From Labyrinth add to Team Leader Mok's total.)
- Team Leaders and participant characters all pool their dice, with a -1 penalty to the pool for each participant character.
- Team Leaders and secondary participant characters all pool their dice and roll normally.  

Damage is a little more dangerous in this version, since a 2-die Cliché will become useless after only one die of damage. To counteract this, the GM may allow any Cliché reduced to 1 to be used as a Quirk (see below).

Borrowed shamelessly from ORE, but research during writing revealed a previous version of this variant.  

The Drama Die: Each dice pool includes one die of a different colour than the rest; this is the Drama Die. It has two special effects:

- If the Drama Die is part of a matching set, then the character has achieved a Dramatic Success. In combat, this means that the loser suffers an extra die of damage, or, if the player chooses, they may regain a die of damage, or 'bank' a one-time reduction in difficulty (assuming a sensible explanation of how the Dramatic Success affects the later difficulty). Other effects are at the GM's discretion.

- If the Drama Die rolls a one, and there are no matches, then the character has suffered a Dramatic Failure. Either they get hit with some damage in a non-combat situation, increased difficulty on a later round of combat, or some extra challenge in the future. Drama Dice may be included in every roll, or just those made by a dramatically-important characters. (e.g. In a fight between David Bowie From The Hunger and Goblin Puppet From The Labyrinth #25, David Bowe From The Hunger uses a drama die and Goblin Puppet From The Labyrinth #25 doesn't.)

If a Cliché is Pumped by at least 2, the drama die is also doubled, increasing the chances of a dramatic success. Borrowed shamelessly from ICON.

Cliché Tags These are little sub-definitions appended to Clichés which change how they work. Expert Cliché This is the cliché which defines their profession, calling, talent, obsession, ten-thousand-hours of experience, essential nature or whatever. Here's how they work:

- Expert Clichés break ties in favour of said Expert.

- The Expert Cliché may be double-pumped. If it's pumped by at least 2 dice, then the Drama Die is also double-pumped, giving you three Drama Dice total. It's up to the GM if the Expert Cliché costs as much as a Double-Pump Cliché in regular Risus, or whether they can co-exist in character creation. (I'd vote no on both counts.)

- If the GM uses dice penalties for difficulty, the Expert Cliché automatically reduces one die penalty before rolling. If the GM is using target number of matched dice, the Expert Cliché doubles any one matching die, automatically creating an extra match.

Body and Mind Clichés These tags are applied to the two Clichés which most closely describe those two aspects of a character. These are now your character's 'Health Pools' for each; if a character damages you with an attack, this Cliché is the one that takes the damage and the one which determines when you lose the fight.

Body damage is the most obvious: bullets, knives, punches, poisons, illness.

Mind damage is madness, fear, mind-affecting poisons, psychic domination, torture or stressful situations. It might also mean damage to your sense of self or identity.

For a Cliché to be tagged with Body or Mind, it must have at least 2 dice. It is suggested that one's primary offensive combat Cliché should be tagged with Body, and the primary Cliché for knowing things or convincing people of things should be tagged with Mind, but that's not required. It's permitted to assign both Body and Mind tags to the same Cliché, but really, who would?

If the GM wishes, damage to non-Body or Mind Clichés might still happen, but be represented in-game as change in tactical position or temporary conditions which would refresh after a combat.

Another option would be to demand all Clichés would be tagged with either Body or Mind, so as to create a broader pool for damage to be assigned. A corollary variant would be to number each tag to determine which Cliché takes damage first.

Borrowed, kind of, from Unknown Armies.

Quirk: Since a 1d Cliché is useless in this variant as it can't generate any matches, 1d Clichés are handled a little differently. 1d Clichés are Quirks. These are odd or idiosyncratic traits which colour your character's motives or habits, especially visually or verbally distinctive ones, but in ways unrelated or in addition to other Clichés. (e.g. Always Smokes A Cigar, Distinctive Scar/Breathmask/Hairstyle/Hideous Deformity, Huge Limpid Eyes, Quotes Mangled Movie Lines). Quirks can be used in two ways:

- The player can invoke the Quirk as a bonus die for another Cliché. This might apply just once in a combat, or for each round. As can expected, this depends on the GM's or table's agreement.

- The GM (or the player, if they're the sort) can invoke the Quirk as a 1 die penalty to a roll where it may cause problems. (e.g. A lit cigar may draw attention in a dark room, or allow a creature to track the distinctive scent.)

 Quirk Clichés may not be pumped, nor damaged (see Body and Mind).  

Example Character: This is what the Risus sample character would look like with these variant rules.
Viking 4 [Body, Expert]
Womanizer 2
Gambler 3 [Mind]
Poet 1 [Quirk]