by James Palmer Dracula the Warlord – In life, Vlad Tepes was a man who would go to any end to win. In death, he’s worse. Being a vampire is only one part of his toolkit, and while he uses it, he’ll never become dependent on it. You pull a cross? He pulls a gun. You don’t invite […]
Tag Archives: night’s black agents
The original 1894 Operation Edom brief, key memos, secret military maps of Transylvania, précis of reports from Balkan battlefronts and German academies alike, and plans for the next century’s battle for control of the Un-Dead — these are the Hawkins Papers. The handouts that make up the Hawkins Papers are as improvisational as the […]
Karloff reviewed the backer-PDF copy of the Dracula Dossier. You can find the full review here. Thanks, Karloff! Karloff says, “This improvisational Night’s Black Agents campaign setting, complete with the unredacted print copy of Stoker’s first edition Dracula and a massive Director’s Handbook, is beyond huge. It’s one thing to write up Stoker’s Dracula with little […]
“I think that Varna is not familiar to any of us …” — Van Helsing In my defense, not a lot of stuff happens in Varna. I mean, in the novel. Lots of stuff happens in Varna, including a disastrous Crusade in 1444 that killed the King of Poland and nearly killed Vlad Tepes’ brother […]
Before we plunge into the endless deluge of “Dracula Dossier bits we couldn’t fit in anywhere else”, let us pause on the brink and consider the utility of pyramids. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Night’s Black Agents offers two pyramid diagrams to help the Gamemaster. The Conspyramid is the organizational chart of bad guys […]
Check out Nook Harper’s alternate Night’s Black Agents setting over on the Illuminerdy. Thanks, Nook! “Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent’anni ‘mpaci” “He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace”
In Bram Stoker’s original Notes for Dracula, we find the following cryptic line: Lawyer – (Sortes Virgilianae) conveyance of body Stoker originally thought perhaps the “lawyer” character Peter Hawkins, mostly written out of the book, would perform the sortes Virgilianae, literally the “Virgilian lots,” to find out how his new client would work out. Both […]
“You know how modern advertising gets everybody’s mind set in the same direction, wanting the same things, imagining the same things. And you know the psychologists aren’t so sceptical of telepathy as they used to be. Add up the two ideas. Suppose the identical desires of millions of people focused on one telepathic person. Say […]
Page XX A Column about Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Out of the box, GUMSHOE’s lie-noticing ability, Bullshit Detector (or Assess Honesty as it is known in more genteel settings) addresses the central problem of its category. How do you give characters in a mystery story the ability to tell when people are lying without […]
Deadlier things than vampires lurk in the shadows. They’re called multinational corporations. When the agents are tipped off to the vampire Conspiracy’s next move, it seems like check and mate — but the rescue of a kidnap victim halfway around the world leads them into the hall-of-mirrors world of corporate espionage. The web of deception and malfeasance they uncover will take them from remote North […]