Tag Archives: night’s black agents

The Plain People of Gaming: Houndhounds of Bucharest

“The children of the night… what music they make!” We’ve prowled around the topic of werewolves in Night’s Black Agents once in a blue moon. The ghoul stats in the core rulebook (p. 150) include a quick-and-dirty conversion to wolfman mode; a pack of terrorist werewolves shows up in The Edom Files. Some say Ken chains himself […]

See Page XX: Improv and GUMSHOE Scenario Structure

A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws GUMSHOE core games present the GM with a default scenario structure you can use when creating your own mysteries to challenge your players. By following it you can ensure that the investigators have at least one, and preferably many, routes to solve the adventure’s key question, whether […]

The Plain People of Gaming: Behind Vampire Lines

Cthulhu City, our new Trail of Cthulhu setting about a monstrous, mythos-haunted city adapts the Night’s Black Agents Heat mechanics to model Suspicion. Think of Suspicion as a slow simmer compared to Heat’s flash-fry. Rising Heat means police SWAT teams chasing you through the streets and airports shutting down; rising Suspicion implies police detectives knocking […]

The Sinful Elect

I’m working on the (somewhat delayed) first draft of Night’s Black Agents One2One, provisionally titled SOLO. These vampires nearly featured as the villains, but for various reasons, they got cut. Here’s the salvaged text, plus their standard NBA stats. The Conspiracy They are the Sinful Elect, damned to immortality through sin. Each of them committed some terrible transgression […]

Call of Chicago: The Ravensrodd Horror

A land that is thirstier than ruin A sea that is hungrier than death Heaped hills that a tree never grew in Wide sands where the wave draws breath. — Algernon Swinburne, “By the North Sea” (1880) At some point around 1230 (perhaps during the “St. Luke’s Storm” of 1228 when the people of London […]

The Persephone Extraction

Five desperate adventures to save the living from the hungry dead! They are so old they cannot remember their names. They are pale, spindly things, with hollow eyes, and long fingers that scuttle like cave-spiders. They are strong – immensely, inhumanly strong – but act like old, arthritic people, shuffling along painfully, conserving their strength […]

Looking Glass: Hong Kong

Looking Glass: Hong Kong is a “Low and Slow” city setting for many possible GUMSHOE games. This look at one of Asia’s most cramped and chaotic ports features the lay of the land, including markets and masses, and three unique backdrops for the main setting – a scenic or thematic element, or just somewhere to stage a […]

Call of Chicago: The Five Eyes Have It

I got a friend over there in the government block And he knows the situation and he’s taking stock, I think I’ll call him up now Put him on the spot, tonight. — Bob Geldof, “Someone’s Looking At You” Her Majesty the Queen having graciously given her assent at the end of last month, the […]

Running the Van Helsing Letter at WashingCon

By Tom Abella Introduction Conventions are special. Home games with friends and the occasional new player are our bread and butter, but I’ve always considered Con games to be a time to go the extra mile for the players (people actually paid to get in, for crying out loud). In preparation for running Night’s Black […]

Call of Chicago: The Lost Last Prince of Transylvania

“Some curiosity may be felt as to his history; I will trace it with the utmost truthfulness, according to his own words, adding any necessary explanations. He told me that he was eighty-eight years of age when he came here, and that he was the son of Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania by his first wife, […]

This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By browsing this website, you agree to our use of cookies.