Your Vampire Primer

There are some people who contend that the United Nations is fighting a secret war on sovereignty and democracy in its pursuit of a ‘one world government’. This is not true. It is fighting a secret war, not against sovereignty and democracy, but a threat insidious and hidden that preys upon humanity–vampires. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) fields ‘Special Action Units’ (SAUs) dedicated to the study, location, and eradication of vampires. Armed with automatic shotguns and assault rifles that fire blessed and consecrated rounds of wood, silver, and graphite, and wearing armour incised with religious iconography and inscriptions, once these teams have a target, they are sent out aboard ‘black helicopters’ to strike at the horridly implacable creatures that are vampires.

This is the set-up for Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide, published by Osprey Books as part of its Osprey Adventures line. Best known for its its military history books, each diligently researched and meticulously illustrated with period photographs and fully painted colour plates, entries in the Osprey Adventures series goes beyond the facts to meld it with fiction. The result is a sourcebook of ideas for a gamer’s current game or a background for a whole new game. All a gamer needs to do is add the rules of his choice. The series has already looked at The Nazi Occult and given us Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide–amongst others... 

Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide most resembles Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide, being an examination of several types of vampire, their creation, their feeding and hunting habits, their relationship to humanity, and humanity’s response to each of these horrors. It does these for five continents–Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and South America. In doing so, it focuses upon five types of vampire–the Strigoi, the Asanbosam and the Obayifo, the Jiangshi, and the Chupacabra. Of course, the various chapters are nicely illustrated with pieces of period art, photographs of various artifacts, and full colour artwork.

It begins with the Strigoi in Europe and a raid on a nest during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, before delving into the history and types of the Strigoi. They are closest in type to the vampire of the modern era, typified by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but other types exist in the Balkans and beyond. The Strigoi of course feeds on blood, is capable of transforming themselves into bats or wolves, and possess a certain sexual allure. The Papacy was the first organisation to recognise the ‘satanic’ threat and attempt to deal with it, such that many of the creatures took the opportunity to flee to the New World. Here the only rivals they had were each other, for North America had no vampiric tradition, and so they hid themselves and through wise investments, managed to protect themselves with great wealth. This makes them extremely difficult to track down and identify–it can take years of careful work by the FBI before an SAU can strike.

Less familiar will be the Asanbosam and the Obayifo, the vampiric creatures native to modern day Ghana and the historical Ashanti Empire. The Asanbosam is an arboreal bat-like hunter that reaches down from the trees for its prey, which is driven to mankind when they enter and then cut down the forest. In response, vampire hunters would train to enter the canopy, armed with short, gold-tipped spears and knives, and often protected by the juju or magic of the Marabout. Where the Asanbosam feeds on blood and flesh, the Obayifo, a spirit vampire, feeds off negative empathic energy. There is the possibility that the Obayifo are capable of controlling the Asanbosam, but where the Asanbosam seems confined to the diminishing forests, the Obayifo seems to have spread beyond Ghana’s borders.

Conversely, the Jiangshi will be familiar to devotees of Hong Kong cinema. The ‘stiff corpsed’ hopping vampire takes decades to form after it was improperly buried and grows tougher, stronger, and develops a more potent breath over time. It is an empathic vampire that can track its prey by their breathing. Again a group trained to deal with the threat, this time of the monks of the Shaolin Temple, who would use their martial arts skills and meditative calming techniques to prepare themselves against the Jiangshi. Lastly Taoist magic is used to still the vampires so that they can be led away for a proper burial. Of course, with founding of Chinese communities around the world, there are innumerable cities where the knowledge and ability to deal with a Jiangshi has been lost.

The last vampire detailed in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide is the Chupacabra, a large bat-like creature that in recent years has spread out of the cenotes found across the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico into the great cities of North America with their extensive subterranean infrastructure. In rural areas the dreaded ‘goat sucker’ is known to feed on large livestock, but in built up urban areas, the primary prey is humanity–particularly its dregs.

In addition to these five or so vampires, various other types are also discussed. For example, other types of Strigoi include the Balkan/Czech Pijavica which preys upon former family members and the Polish Vjesci which can be recognised by the caul its head. Similarly, the Dhampir human/vampire hybrids, hated by their parents, are said to have found a home with some SAUs. As much as Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide discusses its monsters, it is small details such as this and the fact that SAUs work with FBI forensics and behavioral analysts that provide hooks upon which to hang the role of SAU members or support staff, for example in creating a roleplaying campaign.

Unfortunately, a GM will need to extract such details if he wants to use them for his game. In a traditional Osprey Books title there will be colour plates depicting what an SAU operative wears and is equipped with, accompanied by suitable descriptions. Sadly, this is not included. Equally as disappointing is the lack of a bibliography in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. Where Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide had a short if imperfect section entitled ‘Further Reading, Watching, and Gaming’, but this is absent in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. There are some very obvious inspirations for many of the vampires presented in its pages–for example, the movie Encounters of the Spooky Kind for the Jiangshi and the ‘El Mundo Gira’ episode of The X-Files for the Chupacabra. Others like the Asanbosam will be more difficult to provide inspiration for, but it would certainly help the reader with his further research. Similarly, a list of games would help in applying the content of  Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. Obviously, Pelgrane Press’ Night’s Black Agents is the go-to RPG for fighting vampires, but Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Savage Worlds, White Wolf Inc.’s Hunter: the Vigil, Evil Hat Publishing's FATE Core, and even the recently released Cryptworld from Goblinoid Games would all work.

Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide is readable and a decent source of material to apply to the vampire hunting game of your choice. The lack of application to that end–no bibliography and no immediate material upon which to hang campaign, for example, does mean that it is just background when it could have been just a little more supportive.

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Staked Twice, Never Bitten

There are one or two facts that you need to know about Double Tap, the first supplement for one of the best RPGs—certainly the finest espionage and finest espionage/horror RPG—of 2012, Night’s Black Agents: the Vampire Spy Thriller RPG. Written by Ken Hite and published by Pelgrane Press, the player characters are ex-secret agents who have learned that their former employers are controlled by vampires and decide to take down the vampiric conspiracy before the vampires take them. As much a toolkit as an RPG, it gives everything that the Director needs to design and create his game, allowing him to design the vampire conspiracy and the vampire threat, from psychic alien leeches to the traditional children of Transylvania, and set the tone and style of the espionage, from the high octane of the James Bond franchise to the dry and mundane grittiness of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Essentially, Night’s Black Agents is your Schweizer Offiziersmesser of vampires and espionage.

The first fact is that as the title might suggest, Double Tap is not a supplement about guns—Double Tap being a shooting manoeuvre intended to ensure that a target is definitely dead by shooting him twice in the head—although there is a section about guns in the book. This of course begs the question, “Why exactly, is this supplement called ‘Double Tap’?”. Which is a perfectly good question to which there is a perfectly good answer in the last paragraph of this review. The second is that Double Tap is not the ‘Agent’s Companion’ for Night’s Black Agents. It is instead the ‘The Night’s Black Agents Expansion Book’, because it contains information for the Director as well as the players and their characters. Indeed, it has sections entitled ‘Agent’s Companion’ and ‘Director’s Companion’. Between them, the players and Director are served up a plethora of clues, benefits, cherries, manoeuvres, rules, gadgets and (yes) guns, and more—all delivered as an easy-to-digest, no-fuss, but some frills, in-country supply drop.

The ‘Agent’s Companion’ dives straight into a re-examination of an agent’s Abilities. Each receives a new overviews and a new focus, the latter less mechanical than a new means of applying it; a ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’ that showcases how might be used to best effect; sample benefits to be gained from spending the points from an Ability’s pool; and sample clues. For example, the new focus for the Accounting Ability is money laundering. It provides a short, but detailed description of how it is done; its ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’ describes how Accounting might be used to track down and use an illegal stash of guns to gain an advantage over the opposition; and how it can be spent to gain benefits on other Abilities when they are next used. The accompanying sample clues show how ‘following the money’ can lead somewhere interesting, and like the sample clues for the other Abilities detailed in Double Tap, can either be as is and added in game, or as models to adjusted for the Director’s own game. Other Investigative Abilities also include extra details, associated equipment, and so on, such as the list of British Police Jargon for Cop Talk, the most expensive hotels in Europe for High Society, toxins for Pharmacy, and what you pack in a ‘Bug-Out’ bag under Urban Surveillance.

Then Double Tap does exactly the same thing for an Agent’s General Abilities. Again, each of these is given a new focus, for example, Parkour for Athletics and Plastic Explosives for Explosives; new sample clues, and so on. Instead of ‘Tactical Fact-Finding Benefit’, they have new Cherries, the extra special benefits that come with having high Abilities. In general, these are not quite as interesting as those for Investigative Abilities, but the point of this re-examination is to make each and every Ability interesting, useful, and evocative. It highlights how every Ability can bear upon the game and how the Director should be bringing his player Agents’ Abilities into his campaign.

Double Tap then presents a number of new mechanical options or ‘Tricks of the Trade’, that work in conjunction with a player narration. All a player has to do is narrate the action to gain the benefit of an Ability refresh with these, just as with those in the core rules. In this they work in a similar fashion to the Thriller manoeuvres, like Gear Devil or Technothriller Monologue, found in Night’s Black Agents. They also push the levels of competence, so are suited to more cinematic games. The first is a number of new Thriller manoeuvres, the majority of which these are for non-combat Abilities, such as Grease Monkey for Mechanics and Verbal Trauma Unit for Medic. These are followed by a set of Achievement refreshes—inspired by computer gaming—that push up the cinematic aspects of Night’s Black Agents that little bit more, such as ‘Lifeline’ for climbing out of a window using knotted sheets or fire hose, or ‘Mother Superior’ for impersonating a religious figure! Tricks of the Trade’ continues with ‘Adaptive Tradecraft’, which takes ‘standard’ adaptive espionage or Tradecraft techniques and suggests how they might work when hunting vampires. Rounding this chapter out is a set of standard operating procedures, the Cartagena Rules. These are not for being spies in the field—Night’s Black Agents has the Bucharest Rules for that, backed up by the Moscow Rules in Double Tap—but for playing Night’s Black Agents. Their aim is to keep the game moving and enjoyable, to avoid it stagnating and getting dull, and being a set of rules, they are short and to the point. Good advice for players and Director alike.

‘Materiel’ puts gadgets, gear, and guns under the spotlight. To an extent, this section is in Q Branch territory, especially with its vehicle upgrades like oil slick dispensers and disposable car skins. Guns get the same treatment, but some of the special ammunition may have its uses in any style of game against vampires. Whilst a list of firearms is included, they are not necessarily there for the agents’ use, but rather to arm particular agencies.

The Thriller Chase rules in Night’s Black Agents turned up the action for chases by foot, by vehicle, and so on. ‘Thriller Contests & Manhunts’ does the same for Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, and Surveillance. What this means is that certain non-combat scenes—hacking attempts, stealthy break-ins and break-outs, and monitoring a suspect—can played out dramatically, even thrillingly, by making them intense contests. There are guidelines given to make each of them thrilling and how to use other Abilities during Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, or Surveillance attempts. Not every attempt or scene involving Digital Intrusion, Infiltration, or Surveillance need be run as a Thriller Contest, but when needed, now they can, and they give the player agents involved their moment in the spotlight. In similar fashion, the Manhunt rules up the ante for handling chases, especially where the quarry is trying to do more than just get away. Of course, this is all whilst the player agents are burned and out in the cold, no longer having access to the manpower or infrastructure to carry out a manhunt.

The remaining third of Double Tap is the ‘Director’s Companion’ and for his eyes only. He receives a good set of NPCs, ready to fill out cameo roles, and easy to portray and modify, that can be used as assets or clues. Accompanying these is a set of ‘Establishing Shots’, locations and scenes that the Director can set up a scene and bring it to life. Both sets are evocative and fun, as well as being easy-to-use tools. Double Tap also comes with four new monsters—the chupa, the ekimmu, the homunculus, and the penanggalan—and a complete vampire build in the form of the nosferatu, the latter being familiar to most gamers (and agents). Of course Night’s Black Agents has plenty of options when it comes to the Director creating or selecting a vampiric foe for his game, but these add more, especially given that there are notes included on how to turn these creatures of one legend into another. For the Director, a whole new story aid is provided in the form of the ‘Suspyramid’, which plugs into the ‘Conspyramid’, the structure that underpins the vampire conspiracy in Night’s Black Agents. It helps him run games in which the player agents not only dismantle the conspiracy, but set parts of it against each other. Rounding out the ‘Director’s Companion’ are notes on running Night’s Black Agents in other eras, specifically the Victorian Age, World War II, and the Cold War. These do feel a little underwritten, but they are really no more than notes. Of course, any one of these three periods would be worthy of a supplement in their own right.

Physically, Double Tap is a well-written, easy-to-read, and easily digestible supplement. Its contents are nicely supported by a good index and, for the Director, summary lists of the cherries and vampiric powers—both from Night’s Black Agents and Double Tap.

Companion volumes are not always the most interesting or coherent of reads. This is the danger of covering lots of different subjects under one cover, but Double Tap contains different things that are actually interesting. The new rules its gives are interesting and better than that, they evoke their genre and are fun in the process. If there is a downside to them, it is that they evoke the more cinematic side of Night’s Black Agents, rather than the drier grittier side. Nevertheless, Double Tap provides plenty of manoeuvres and tricks of the trade to ensure that a Director’s Night’s Black Agent is definitely fun.

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Kiss Kiss Fang Fang

Imagine if you were a former spy or intelligence officer or intelligence analyst, and you discovered a fundamental truth about the world. A truth that revealed just who was in charge of the world and might just have been in charge of the world for centuries or more… Not just mere humans of the New World Order or the Prieuré de Sion, but vampires! What if these vampires were really in charge of your former agency? Or the government? Or an international bank? Or all three? What would you do? This is the set up for Night’s Black Agents, the latest RPG to be written by Ken Hite using the GUMSHOE System, an RPG that the author pitches as “The Bourne Identity meets Dracula” or a “Vampire Spy Thriller.”

Published by Pelgrane Press, Night’s Black Agents, brings together the genres of espionage and horror in the post-Cold War period of the here and now, not in a singular blend, but as an assortment of ingredients from which the Game Master or Director, creates two dishes, tempering or sharpening them with certain flavours before intentionally colliding the two together. In other words, Night’s Black Agents is essentially a pair of toolkits, one to create the desired type of espionage, the other the desired type of vampire, backed up with the means to run the two against each other. The default setting is the “vampire spy thriller,” one of horror and shadows combined with bursts of action interspersed with the methodical processes of the espionage story. The toolkit allows the GM to model his campaign so that he can emphasise the psychological impact of being a spy, such as in Alias or Callan; the gritty, almost mundane feel of espionage as in Rubicon or The Sandbaggers; the genre’s “wilderness of mirrors” world of shifting allegiances and hidden agendas as exemplified by the best of John Le Carré’s fiction; and the high stakes patriotism of the novels of both Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming. Each of these models is a Mode, respectively Burn, Dust, Mirror, and (High) Stakes Mode, and there are indicators throughout the pages of Night’s Black Agents that point out where one rule works for one Mode and not for another.

So for example, in a Mirror Mode game, there is the possibility that one Contact per session will be flipped and work for the other side; players can choose to keep their agents’ Drives secret from each other; the Director can implement the mechanics for Trust between the player character agents; and an agent’s funding and equipment is likely to come from clandestine sources. Whereas, for a game in the Dust Mode, the players have fewer General Abilities (these being the more physical aspects and skills of an agent); no Military Occupational Speciality or MOS; cannot miraculously find high-resolution images within blurry video or pictures when using the Data Recovery Interpersonal Skill; when falling, it is not possible for a player to use either his Athletics or Hand-to-Hand ratings (if they are high enough) to ease a fall by bouncing between walls; and of course, gun fights can be lethal. These are not the only options to help a Director run a Night’s Black Agents campaign in either the Mirror or Dust Modes, but for the most part, the options and suggestions given throughout the book are all about “dialling down” the rules from its default of the “vampire spy thriller.”

Character creation adheres to the GUMSHOE System rules, with players assigning two pools of points to two types of Abilities. The smaller number of points is assigned to an agent’s Investigative Abilities, which are used to gather clues; the larger number to his General Abilities, which represent his physical skills. Apart from in Dust Mode, which does not use them, what an agent prior did to going solo or private, is represented by his MOS, his area of expertise. Several are listed, from Analyst and Asset Handler to Wheel Artist and Wire Rat. Primarily each MOS lists the minimum Investigative and General Abilities required to have carried it out as a job, but it also gives the possible positions with various agencies. So for example, an agent with the “Bang-and-Burner” MOS could have been an IRA bomb builder or a Special Branch bomb disposal expert whereas an agent with the Wheel Artist MOS could have been a Union Corse car thief, a DGSE “Action Division” driver, a Deutsche Bank-provided chauffer, and so on.  Besides assigning points to his character’s Abilities and choosing his MOS, a player needs to define more of his character’s Background, his Sources of Stability (these help keep an agent grounded when he is under stress or threatened, but can be undermined or subverted), and how he fits into the team that the player agents will form.

The sample player character agent is an ex-Stasi surveillance officer, an expert watcher turned investigator who has been unable to quite find a place in the world following the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the unification of Germany. Initially he worked as a contractor for governments in the old Eastern Bloc and the Caribbean, and then for corporations in the old Eastern Bloc, but he prefers to work for the government agencies rather than corporations. Conversely, he prefers to work for corporations in the West as their motives are purer. He is a grey haired bespectacled man who has the appearance of a bureaucrat who is perhaps a little worn down. (The agent has been designed for a Mirror Mode game with twenty-two points to be assigned to his Investigative Abilities for a four-player agent team.) 

Anton Wendell
Age: 53
Nationality: German
Agency: Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS); Stasi
MOS: Investigator/Watcher
Sources of Stability: Wife’s confirmation medal (Symbol); his mentor, Hans Urner (Solace); the island of Rügen (Safety)
Drive: Nowhere else to go. 

Investigative Abilities
Academic: Architecture 1, Art History 1, Human Terrain 1, Languages 2, Law 1
Interpersonal: Bullshit Detector 1, Bureaucracy 1, Cop Talk 1, Flattery 1, Interrogation 1, Negotiation 1, Streetwise 1, Tradecraft 2
Technical: Electronic Surveillance 3, Notice 3, Photography 2, Urban Survival 1
General Abilities 
Athletics 3, Cover 10, Digital Intrusion 3, Disguise 4, Driving 4, Hand-to-Hand 6, Health 8, Infiltration 8, Network 15, Piloting 1, Sense Trouble 8, Shooting 2, Shrink 2, Stability 8, Surveillance 12
Languages: German (native); English, Russian, lip reading, ASL, Spanish

Mechanically, Night’s Black Agents uses the GUMSHOE System and therefore deviates little from the previous titles that Pelgrane Press has published – Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and so on. This has the ratings in Investigative Abilities being spent to gain extra clues during the course of an adventure or investigation – if an agent has a rating in any one Investigative Ability, then he can always gain the base clues related to that Ability, whereas the ratings from General Abilities are spent to modify dice rolls. The focus of the rules is of course on espionage and so cover chases, combat, the dangers of the espionage world (plus the dangers of an espionage world in which there are vampires), heat (that is, gaining too much attention), and spytech. Night’s Black Agents being a “Vampire Spy Thriller,” it turns up the chase and combat mechanics with the Thriller Chase and Thriller Combat rules, the former being accompanied lists of locations and potential obstacles to overcome and make the player agents look cool, whilst the latter cover just about every form of cinematic gun-fu short of the modern Wuxia genre.

One new aspect of the GUMSHOE System in Night’s Black Agents is specifically aimed at the Thriller aspect of the game – “Cherries.” If an agent has a General Ability with a rating of eight or more, he is regarded as being skilled enough to gain a special benefit. In the case of Thriller Combat, it allows an agent to conduct extra attacks, sniping attacks, purchase Special Weapons Training, and so on. Every General Ability comes with a Cherry, the benefits varying from an extra skill rating, such as the bonus from Digital Intrusion granting a point in the Cryptography Investigative Ability, to simple cool things that an agent can do, such as the “Open Sesame” aspect of the Infiltration Ability that enables an agent to bypass simple locks. Perhaps one of the coolest Cherries is the “Technothriller Monologue” for the Shooting Ability, which grants an agent a refresh to his Shooting Ability if he can narrate how he uses his guns in true Clancy-esque style. Rounding the espionage-themed first half of Night’s Black Agents is a pair of sections, one on advice for agents and the other on advice for players, covering tactical skill use and essentially how to play the game. Whilst both sections are excellent, the second shorter section is pleasingly upfront in suggesting how to play in order to get the most out of the game.

The remaining half of Night’s Black Agents is for the Director’s eyes only, presenting a set of toolkits with which to build the game’s inhuman threats, their conspiracies, their territories, and the stories that will be told through play. The first of the toolkits is all about building the required type of vampire. Instead of campaign Modes, the Director builds his vampires around one of four Parameters – Alien, Damned, Mutant, or Supernatural. Beginning with their origins and means of spreading, the Director decides everything about his vampires – their numbers, their source of food, the cure to their vampirism, their powers, and their weaknesses. If a Director does not want to design a vampire for his campaign, he can choose any one of the off-the-shelf designs included, such as the “Linea Dracula Vampire,” descended from Vlad the Impaler, or the non-Euclidean silicon-based aliens that have imprinted on human DNA. Besides these, the author draws from various real world mythologies to extend the book’s vampiric menagerie, from the Adzeh, the insect-demon of Ghana to the humble zombie. Suggestions are given so that the Director can customise these threats so that they can be reused or tweaked enough to be unrecognisable to the players. Of course, just as there is nothing to stop a Director from creating his own original vampire threat, there is nothing to stop a Director from adapting a vampire from another source, whether that is from a film (the obvious joke here being, “No sparkles”), a book, or another RPG.

The focus of play in Night’s Black Agents is bringing down the conspiracy that the vampires have constructed around themselves. To help the Director construct this conspiracy, he builds into a pyramid structure called a “Conspyramid,” its base containing the outer edges of the conspiracy with the very heart of it – the vampire leaders of the conspiracy – sitting atop both the structure and the organisation. The resulting “Conspyramid” contains a number of nodes, each a part of the conspiracy and serving as a certain function within it, with the bulk of the nodes at its base or outer limits. Between the nodes the Director builds connections and lays clues, in the process constructing a story map for the campaign. As a structure, this story map remains open enough that the Director can improvise and revise the nodes and their connections as the player agents begin to dismantle the “Conspyramid” and make deductions of their own. (The Director also has a corresponding “Vampyramid,” which details and tracks the possible response of the conspiracy against the agents’ actions.)

Night’s Black Agents’ focus on constructing and bringing down the conspiracy needs a stage and it provides a means to create this with a relative minimum amount of preparation. The game being one of post-Cold War espionage, naturally this setting is Europe and spies invariably having natural home in the urban environment, the setting is actually the cities of Europe. The means to create what will become the backdrop for the Director’s campaign can be as complex or as simple as the Director wants, but the author suggests a quick and dirty method involving a little research combined with determining the aims and activities of the conspiracy within the city before coming up with three hooks to pull the player agents in. The alternative “Low and Slow” method results in a more detailed city better suited to extended play and exploration. Sample cities created by both means are included, and like the sample “Vampyramid,” can easily be used as part of a campaign.

Besides a top secret appendix full of useful forms, the Director receives a scenario with which to kick off a campaign and some excellent advice. The scenario, “(S)entries,” can also be run as part of an on-going campaign, but either way, it requires some preparation upon the Director’s part. The advice for the Director is much more straightforward and concise, helpfully guiding him through the possibilities and perils of running a Night’s Black Agents campaign – the potential for an investigation to become a railroad, be prepared for the players to really use the Preparedness General Ability a lot, constructing the typical Thriller spine for an operation, letting the players contribute to keeping the campaign “cool,” and so on.

Physically, Night’s Black Agents is a well-designed book. The contents are not only well organised, but also colour-coded so as give each section its own identity. Done in full colour throughout, the artwork is never less than atmospheric. The writing is taut and never less than informed with the author’s appreciation of both genres constantly on show. A nice touch is that he even goes so far as to provide his own DVD-style commentary on various aspects of the game and the genres it is emulating and combining, allowing his voice to come to the fore.

There is so much in Night’s Black Agents that can be pulled out and used elsewhere. The Conspyramid structure can be used in any RPG with a conspiracy game, both to map out its conspiracy and thus its story structure; its city preparation guidelines to create interesting locales for any urban set RPG; and of course, the espionage rules with almost any GUMSHOE System RPG. Indeed, Night’s Black Agents already suggests how the latter can be done – presenting alternative ways of using its material. Most obviously as a straight espionage RPG sans the horror, but in gaming terms even more obviously by combining it with the source material from Trail of Cthulhu to do something along the lines of Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels. Of course, the Laundry Files RPG already does this, but this suggestion continues to use the GUMSHOE System mechanics. The other suggestion pushes Night’s Black Agents in the direction of Brian Lumley’s Necrosope novels. Similarly, the GUMSHOE System has horror source material aplenty if the Director wants his agents to come up against foes other than vampires.

Of course, there is nothing to stop a Director from taking the more off-the-shelf elements of Night’s Black Agents – stick with the default “Vampire Spy Thriller” setting and its high octane rules, pick one of the sample vampires as his campaign’s antagonists, use the sample cities as his campaign backdrop, and start play using the included scenario. He essentially everything necessary to play, and that would be just fine. Yet in doing so, the Director would be ignoring the one thing that would really make Night’s Black Agents his game, and that is its toolkit aspect and the ability to tinker with just about every element of the game, the rules, the setting, and the campaign. Above all, this toolkit aspect means that not only is no Director’s game is going to be the same as that of any other Director, it also means that every Director has the capacity to make Night’s Black Agents the game that both he and his players want…

As good as the toolkits that Night’s Black Agents provides are, the rules and advice deliver on the game and genre that they promise. Whether it is blood pumping action or heart stopping shocks, Night’s Black Agents is probably best shaken, and definitely has the “Vampire Spy Thriller” staked.

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Victorians & Vampires (& Zombies)

In 1905 the dead rose and fell upon the living.

Whole countries collapsed under the onslaught of the cadaver cavalcade, but society and civilisation held. In the United Kingdom the declaration and implementation of martial law meant that society could hold on and hold out long enough to learn about the new world around them. It would take decades, but slowly the nation’s cities were reclaimed from the dead and refortified to prevent attacks from without, much of the countryside being left to roving bands of animates and the blight that poisons the very ground. Having retaken the cities, the Domestic Security Force – known as the Deathwatch – mans the walls, protecting the cities from threats without whilst having the mandate to ruthlessly put down any outbreaks of the Plague and the rise of the dead within. In the tightly packed slums, the living conditions mean that disease is rife and Outbreaks of the Plague and the dead are far from uncommon.

In the two hundred years since the first Outbreak, the well-known Victorian reverence for the dead has been more than reappraised. The cremation of the recently deceased, lest they rise again, with most bodies going to the great public crematoria – it is a prosecution offense not to send a body there. Only the very rich can afford to have the deceased lie in mourning, and even then, a member of the black clad Mourners’ Guild must watch over the deceased, ready to behead the corpse if he should rise. Other undead threats besides the animates – vampires and ghouls as well as the Frankenstein creations of the alchemy and embryonic sciences – lurk deep in the sewers, tunnels, and warrens below the cities. When the Deathwatch cannot deal with these, Undertakers will delve into the depths, seeking the bounty on the head of each at the branches of the Office of Urban Defence.

Whilst Great Britain remains a parliamentary monarchy, a new aristocracy has arisen as the old has ossified. The industrialists have become richer as the work place reforms of the nineteenth century have been repealed. Of course, this does not dissuade the industrialist nouveau riche from wanting to marry into the aristocracy for the name and the status, and of course, that money gives accesses to the anti-aging treatments that prolong life for up to two hundred years. Another path to unaging is vampirism, although the Office of Urban Defence places a bounty on head of all vampires – or rather their dust – as they are dangerous predators who spread their condition by disease and mind control. Vampires most commonly infect prostitutes, but there are some who survive the infection and live out an existence as that most romanticised of tragic figures in this new age, the Dhampiri. Eschewing their progenitor’s sanguinary desires, the Dhampiri express a hatred of all vampires and often turn to hunting them for their bounty.

The atrocious living and working conditions of the working class to be found in Britain’s cities are not only the breeding grounds of disease and new outbreaks of the Plague, but they are unsurprisingly the breeding grounds for dissent. Food riots are common and anarchist bombing campaigns not unknown, although the men of the City of London Police and Metropolitan Police do their best to rout the terrorists out. They are aided in this task by the clairvoyants, mediums, and telepaths of CID’s Psi Branch. The police also have to deal with the Resurrection Men who trade in bodies for experimentation and as food for the Meat Market; the swelling desire to kill in the growing number of murderers; and having to monitor the otherwise legal practice of prostitution, whose practitioners must be checked lest they spread disease and even vampirism.

The skies over the cities remind the inhabitants of both life and death. They crackle with the galvanic energy of the Tesla Towers that power many of the devices that people use daily, including the Van Haller Lightning Gun favoured by the Deathwwatch, yet are laden with the outpourings of the factories and the public crematoria, forcing everyone to wear protection from the ash coated London Peculiars – even the horses! The working classes often can only afford the cloth “dust masks” to wear over their mouths, whilst the middle and upper classes can afford gas masks of brass, glass, and rubber, as well as clothing in similar material, a style known as “Gas Mask Chic.”

This is the setting for Unhallowed Metropolis, a neo-Victorian set RPG that combines horror, manners, and zombie and vampire hunting set in an alternate future. First published by New Dark Age through by Eos Press in 2007, the Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised returns in 2012, this time published by Atomic Overmind Press, best known for Ken Hite’s superb The Day After Ragnorak. This can only be good news because the few supplements released by New Dark Age for Unhallowed Metropolis were either unavailable beyond the borders of the USA, or inordinately expensive to obtain. As the title suggests, Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised, the book has been redone, both character creation and combat being streamlined; the setting information being expanded to cover the USA, most of Europe, and beyond; new character Callings or types (the Deathwatch Soldier and the Detective) being added; and an array of new material incorporated from some of the supplements previously released. The result is an improved rulebook and background, but as will be explored, not all of game’s original issues have been addressed.

In terms of characters, Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised offers eight Callings – two more than the original edition – each of which not only determines a character’s social class, but also his Class in game terms. The eight are Aristocrat, Criminal, Deathwatch Soldier, Detective, Dhampir Vampire Hunter, Doctor, Mourner, and Undertaker. In addition, rules are given that enable a player to create a custom character not using one of these Callings. Although a Calling provides a character with a set number of features and skills, each also gives plenty of options that allow a player to customise his character. For example, the Aristocrat Calling grants the Blue Blood and Deference Features, but allows the player choose from another thirteen, one for each level in his Etiquette Skill – the skill varies according to the Calling. The Features for the Aristocrat Calling range from Big Game Hunter and Casanova to Military Family and Vogue via Duellist and Gossip. Each Feature usually adds a bonus to skill roles or allows failed skill rolls to be rerolled, but each also adds flavour and background to the character too.

Once a Calling is selected, each player has twenty-five points to spend on six attributes – Vitality, Coordination, Wit, Intellect, Will, and Charm; and another twenty-five to spend on skills. Both are rated between one and five, and with the points available, most characters will have average attributes of 3 or so, with perhaps one attribute a little higher, whilst their skills will again average at 3 with one or two skills much higher. Each player has a final five points with which to customise his character, and he can also choose from a wide selection of advantageous Qualities and disadvantageous Impediments. Before that, a player must select his character’s Corruption. This reflects that although the characters have the capacity to be great figures of the Neo-Victorian Age, they possess a greater susceptibility to the moral decay that threatens the very fabric of society. This is represented by the three Corruption paths that a character could take – Physical, Desire, and Drive. A character begins with just a point in one of these paths and an associated Affliction, but through play can develop further Afflictions as he meanders along the Corruption paths into moral decay, eventually to turn into a monster, both physically and mentally. The most obvious way of being drawn down these paths is by being exposed to greater horrors, but there is a more common means of being driven along the path to Corruption. First a character has “Second Chances” and can make a number of rerolls per session equal to his Corruption, and if he needs more rerolls, then he must increase Corruption, and second, once per session he can call upon the “Devil’s Luck” to automatically get out of a perilous scrape, again at the cost of increasing his Corruption. Since the likelihood of a character requiring “Second Chances” is quite high, it seems odd that the desperate need for luck is so tied to a character’s path to Corruption. That said, at its heart, the Corruption paths are a pleasing roleplaying reflection of the setting.

Our sample character is Mrs. Arthur Fanshawe, the widow of the late Arthur Fanshawe, Member of Parliament for Deal. He rose as a vampire after being infected following continued dalliances with prostitutes and had to be staked after he had killed several of his servants. Thankfully his son, John, was at boarding school at the time. Florence was the one who did the staking and had to endure the scandal even whilst she was in mourning. Come the end of mourning, the scandal did not go away and she entered the “Quiet Service” of the Guild and became a Mourner.

Mrs. Arthur Fanshawe

Calling – Mourner

Vitality 3 Coordination 3 Wit 3 Intellect 2 Will 3 Charm 3

Skills: Concentration 4, Etiquette 3, Language 2 (French), Melee Weapons 4, Psychology 1, Ride 1, Second Sight 1, Shadow 2, Thanatology 3, Theology 2

Prowess 6 Wealth 4

Corruption: Desire 1 – Addiction (Laudanum)

Features: Death Trance, Disconcerting, Disciplined Mind, Exculpus Mastery (Preferred Weapon: Exculpus), Familiarity: Animate, Latent Medium, Twin Blade Fighter (Two Weapon Fighting Stunt, Ambidextrous)

Combat Stunts: Fast Draw, Free Parry, Lucky Shot, Snap Reaction

Qualities: Dreamer (6), Faith (2)

Impediments: Allergy – Pollen (1), Fastidious (1), Good Tasting (4), Ward – Son, John (2)

Equipment: Exculpus (Pair), Armoured Leather Corset, Mourning Clothing, Respirator, £8

Mechanically, Unhallowed Metropolis employs a pair of ten-sided dice, these being rolled and added together along with either the appropriate attribute or skill to equal or beat a Difficulty Rating. A Moderate Difficulty Rating is 11, Complex is 14, Hard is 15, and Virtually Impossible. Although the average result on the dice will be 11, with a character only adding a pertinent attribute or skill to a roll, the average of which will probably be only 2 or 3, there is nevertheless a high chance of a character failing even a Moderate Difficulty Rating. Although some Calling Features and some Qualities allow rerolls with certain skills, it is not all and the likelihood is that a player is going to need to turn to his character’s “Second Chances” more often than not. As much as the Corruption mechanic is an integral part of the setting, this potential reliance upon it is all but an imposition.

This mechanical issue is only exacerbated when it comes to combat, which can be very deadly. That said, one pleasing aspect of the combat rules retained from the original edition are the combat stunts, which a character receives for each level he possesses in a combat skill. For example, “Snap Reaction” enables a character to react before an foe can take an action, whilst Fast Aim allows a character to forgo an action rather than a whole turn in order to gain an aiming bonus. (In the previous edition, every skill had a series of stunts associated with it, which while it added detail, slowed down both character generation and play). Nevertheless, the deadliness of the combat rules not only exacerbates the unforgiving rules system and its reliance upon the Corruption mechanics, it is at odds with the cinematic leanings of the combat stunts.

The problem would not be so bad were the base roll consist of the result of the two ten-sided dice and both the pertinent skill and the pertinent attribute (or twice the pertinent attribute if an attribute check), but it does not. Then it does under certain circumstances, such as attempting to strangle someone, which requires an opposed roll of the Vitality plus Unarmed Combat. To have such inconsistencies is odd and undermines the game’s rules.

The setting itself is explored in some detail, such as a discussion of “unmentionables” and “combat corsetry” under equipment, which covers the setting’s weaponry with flavour aplenty and gives the tools of the trade for the various Callings. Animate Restraints or Dust Kits for collecting the fine ash of staked vampires? Just what every Undertaker needs! Almost a quarter of the core rules is devoted to the threats faced by humanity in the Neo-Victorian Age. In turn, the anatomy of the animate dead – Zombies and Zombie Lords, Vampires and Dhampirs, and Ghouls, as well as the creations of alchemical and galvanic science – artificial life such as the Anathema and the Homunculi, the reanimated dead known as Mercurials, the assembled Prometheans, and the half-living Thropes that are capable of switching between human and bestial forms. The chapters explore the science and philosophy behind the creation of each as well as presenting the stats, and there is plenty here that the GM can draw from for inspiration and flavour for his scenarios. There is enough here that a player could draw from if his Doctor character wants to delve into the alchemical, galvanic, and life sciences of the very modern Neo-Victorian Age.

Many of these elements and threats are further discussed, exploring in particular how they can be used in play, in the chapter for the GM’s eyes only, as well as that ever present danger in the Neo-Victorian Age – scandal! Accompanying these notes and advice is a set of eight plot seeds. The rulebook is rounded out with appendices that provide a glossary, a bibliography, an index, and a detailed description of Deathwatch uniforms.

Physically, Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised come as an attractive and sturdy hardback. The book is illustrated with an array of artwork, some of it black inks, some greyscale pieces, and some it actually photographs of posed models. Much of the latter illustrations are devoted to the illustration of the setting’s “Gas Mask Chic,” and whilst they do fetishize said style, they do not always capture the grime and grubbiness of the setting. The other artwork does though. The book comes with a very nicely done map of London on the inside front and back cover, and the book is generally well written. If there is an issue with the book it is that it is not all that easy to use. The glossary is probably all too short, whilst the index, which although present, is too broad to be really of any use, whilst the need to refer to various tables, such as the wound tables in combat, is hampered by their not being reprinted at the end of the book (though they are referenced).

As much as the setting of Unhallowed Metropolis lends itself to any number of scenario and campaign ideas – Deathwatch duty beyond the walls of the fortified cities, animate hunting through the streets of London, and vampire hunting through London’s high society being the obvious ones – there is pair of dichotomies at the heart of the game and its set up. The first of these is intrinsic to the Victorian era, and is one of class. The issue is that bringing characters of different social classes together, as certainly it would be a possible scandal for a member of high society to be seen consorting with a member of the lower orders. Yet characters of all classes are needed if a party is to gain access to all classes of society. The second is the dichotomy between the combat orientated and the non-combat orientated characters. Both types are necessary, but one type will find itself relegated to the role of bystander when the game focuses on the speciality of the other. Both dichotomies are addressed in the section on Dynamics of Play, and whilst the advice is good, it does not totally negate either dichotomy.

When Unhallowed Metropolis was originally published, I reviewed it in 2008 for Steve Jackson Games’ Pyramid e-zine. The issues that I had at the time were the lack of Callings, the underpowered mechanics that imposed the Corruption mechanic, and the social/combat divide. Four years on and with the publication of Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised, not all of the issues have been addressed. Certainly the additional Callings of the Deathwatch Soldier and the Detective are welcome, as is the additional new material and the streamlining of the stunts. Yet the failure to address the fundamental flaws in the mechanics is at the very least disappointing.

Despite the shortfall in the revisions carried out with Unhallowed Metropolis, Revised, the return of the RPG and the promise of supplements are both more than welcome. The game itself is far from unplayable, and the setting itself is rich in horror, suspense, and intrigue, being atmospheric to the last. Ultimately, the atmosphere is what sells Unhallowed Metropolis, ash-laden, gin-soaked, and perpetually in mourning…

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