HTTP 401: Unauthorized

In HTTP 403: Forbidden I wrote about my dislike of umbrella or global conspiracy. 

This post is a companion piece regarding secrecy as a story theme. Why are secrets so compelling. Why do people and organisations go to such efforts to conceal them and others go to even greater efforts to reveal or retrieve them?

Secrets have value. Whether valued in personal or financial terms (or both) a party would only go to the efort to conceal a secret if there was a cost in the consequences of its exposure.

A man hides his mistress from his wife, a company protects its research from its competitors and a nation conceals its strategic activities from its enemies (and often its allies). 

Bandits are orphans in a world of secrecy. They do not operate under the umbrella of a powerful Patron, though they might have in a prior career. They are contractors. The Patrons they work for often go to elaborate efforts to conceal their identity from the Bandits they hire. What advantage is there in being linked to the people who do your dirty work? A deniable asset is useful, a dis-associated asset is even better. 

A Bandit must be able to physically infiltrate a secure site and they must also be able to mentally infiltrate the secrecy that connects their Patron and Target.  Mission 1 involves stealing diamonds and escaping the consequences, Mission 2 requires covert recovery of some codes and then infiltration of a secure site (the boat) to ex-filtrate a human target, and again dealing with the consequences. Neither mission states the identity of the Patron. There is no `Company A has hired you to get this thing from company B’. What possible advantage is there for Company A to reveal its identity to an expendable asset?

This is the world of secrets. Nothing is given for free. If a Bandit wants to get a definitive answer to a question they will have to wade through all the layers of disinformation, misdirection, obfuscation and deception. The world is awash with more information than at any time in history. Almost all information can be counterfeited given the resources to do so. Facts can only be verified in light of other facts. Answers, for what they are worth, are portraits laboriously painted from fact, each co-varified and suspect until the image emerges from the work.

So how can all of this be used to make fun roleplaying? Think of an investigative journalist or a detective. They frequently use a visual format, sticking photos of people and places on a white board and connecting them with lines denoting different kinds of association. The difference for how a Bandit might do this is that they are typically not looking for associations based on illegal activities. They are looking for a hierarchy of information flow and control. Where are the information bottle necks and who determines the direction of flow?

Secrecy is a complicated thing. The technical aspect of secrecy, cryptography and other stealth and deception technologies, are procedural. A process is used to cypher or conceal. A counter process may be developed to decipher or reveal. Behavioural secrecy is far more complicated. It can be very difficult to convince a person to reveal a secret. Here say reports on the use of torture in the War on Terror state that it is a poor tool for gaining actionable intelligence. Apparently the carrot is more powerful than the stick. Facts can be gathered through the whole range of electronic and audiovisual espionage. Associations and motivations between individuals and organisations are much harder to discern.

And this is where the Bandits step in. Figure out who is meeting with the Target and why. Start drawing a chart with the Target in the middle. Where does he go in his day? Shadow him. What does he do and at what time does he do it? At this point anything could be relevant. Track his phone if you have the right gear. Hack his car. Get the navigation system to keep you updated about where it is. Take photos. Does he always chat with the guy at the newspaper stand? Does that guy work there every day or only on the days that he chats with the Target? Add him onto the chart. Why does the Target always take a coffee break at 10.25? He helped the woman in the red shoes pick up her spilled groceries. Is there a grocery shop nearby? What is she carrying groceries around for? Is it coincidental? All data is retained but most of it is relegated to low relevance. Create a scale for ranking your data in terms of a specific goal. “Is the Target passing industrial secrets to another company?” Data is ranked High,Moderate and Low in terms of relevance to the query. Red shoe woman is ranked Low. You file away her photograph, point of contact, date and time of contact to Target in the Low relevance file along with most of the rest of the data you have collected. A couple of days later you log another standard surveillance photo of the Target through the facial recognition software that you run on all your images. There she is in the background. New hair and black shoes. Different location and time. Two hits bumps her to Moderate Rank and it is time to put a name to that face. She goes up on the chart. The investigation continues…

Editorial Malaise

Writing Mission 2 was hard work. I came across a similar experience to when I used to write mods for computer games. The constant act of editing and reviewing the work reduced the fun of actually playing it. 

Kat and I have not finished playing Mission 2 yet. Despite this I feel that it is a done thing. I have played it in my mind. Being aware of this, I plan on focusing on creating the experience for her as opposed to for myself. Maybe this is good GM/Narrator advice in general. 

Either way, I plan on writing my future missions in a `looser’ style. Lesson learned. Don’t write your gaming materials as though they are a novel. Leave plenty of opportunity for the experience of writing to be significantly different from the experience of running the same material.

Man with a Mission

I am proud to present Mission 2. It was a long time coming and was far more work than I anticipated. Let me know what you think.

Direct Action 2

I was reading through the Bandit Country RPG the other day and realised that it did not really represent the themes and style of Bandit Country. So I rewrote it.

It has been cleaned up and I have removed all of the nasty Fantasy RPG references that had infiltrated from the source material. I also added some new stuff.

Of particular note and something that I am quite proud of, I came up with a cool way of dealing with firearms in BC. Firearms in RPGs usually get a poor representation based on RPG or wargaming conventions. So I had a bit of a brainstorm about what they are actually used for and if you want to know the result, click on the link and download it.

Let me know what you think.

HTTP 403: Forbidden

Umbrella conspiracy theories make for poor roleplaying stories. Discuss.

I think that `secret masters’ type conspiracies where powerful conspirators plot to conceal great hidden truths from the public are a poor thematic choice for a roleplaying game. Infact, I think that they are crap.  They are a crappy rationale for railroading a story along a particular path wherein all mysteries and secrets lie beneath the same banner. Crap.

But wait! What about all those awesome games of the 90s that made such awesome thematic use of conspiracy as character rationale? Delta Green, WODv1, ConspiracyX,  Over the Edge, Unknown Armies and lesser known gems like  Maji for STOCS lite?  These are all awesome games and are undeniable ancestors to the conspiracy RPGs of today. Many of todays games are infact pale replicas of these games. I love each and every one of them.

So why do I think that Umbrella conspiracy theories make for crappy RPG stories? Let me begin with a definition. An umbrella conspiracy sits at the top of a vertical flow chart of secrets and lies. It is an ultimate cause of all hidden control. Lesser conspiracies may orbit in its shadow but they ultimately, possibly tenuously, are linked to it. It is the body of the octopus who’s tentacles stretch out and touch everyone.

Crap.

To be fair, most of the games that I have listed took a horizontal approach to conspiracy. Several Cabals of similar power vie for the ultimate throne, opposing and supporting each other directly and via proxy forces. If the players are active conspirators, perhaps their action will drive their cabal to the top. 

So why is it crap?

Firstly, it assumes that the global public is a mob. A homogeneous crowd that can be controlled and guided using information access and content as a bottleneck.  It also assumes that the public as a mob folows the majority. In general, this may be correct. But some of the greatest social changes in history have been introduced from a minority input. If the public always followed the majority, Christianity would never have become a world religion. No-one would have paid attention to Martin Luther King. Democracy would never have supplanted monarchy. Significant change is introduced into the group consensus from non-conformists. I am confident that a true umbrella conspiracy could not remain secret. 

But what about disinformation? In the First World information is available to the public on an unprecedented scale historically. We know more about the goings on in places that we will never go or be directly influenced by than any society has in human history. But what about the quality of this information. How do I know that it is true? Most news is editorialised or at least edited. What forces inform the decisions that influence the information that I consume and assume is correct? Who decides what information I have access to and who do they report to? The answers to these questions are excellent grist for RPG stories in the modern age.

At the moment the Australian Government is making a list of websites that will be blacklisted. When implemented I will not be able to access any of these sites. Chances are that if I was privvy to this list, I would not want to access any of these sites. But the fact is that the list is being developed and I will never know what is on it. How do you know that there aren’t websites that cannot be accessed from your country or printed newspapers / magazines that cannot be imported? Do the things that my government denies me limit my world view? Does it conceal the fact that grey aliens run the planet?

No.

The Second reason that umbrella conspiracies are crap is that as a concept they assume that fear is a precursor to silence. The staff in the know at Groom Dry Lake wont tell anyone that there is an Alien mother ship in an underground bunker there because they are afraid of what will be done to them if they go public. People do strange things when they are afraid. Fear as a motivator for conformity has a long and storied history of success. Fear has been used overtly by governments, religions and other organisations as a behavioural modifier ever since the tools have been available for its application. What do we call rogue organisations that use fear to promote their agendas. We call them terrorists. Fear mongers.

What was the United States Governments response to the most overt terror attack of modern times on 9.11? Agression. War. Historically the application of fear as a tool for social control has resulted in opposition and change. The Protestant Church arose as a protest against the Catholic Church. The seeds of democracy grew as a response to the binding social control of the European Monarchies. The fall of Communism in the Eastern Bloc? The rise of the women’s rights movement in the 50s following the female freedoms of World War II when the men were away fighting. If Fear is the only tool that can control the public as a whole, it is also the only tool that can inspire great social change.

So my point is that an umbrella conspiracy that has significant control cannot stay secret and will be opposed.

What about mind control, drugs in the water, secret neural satellites and the like. What about magic? If tools like these are available to the powers that be, they could indeed own the world. But how does this make a good story. Who do you tell when the secret powers will just reprogram them to forget? Salmon may swim against the stream but they only do so to die in the headwaters. If the tools of control available to a global conspiracy are so effective they are actually able to enforce their secrecy and retain control, there is no story.

Hard Working Hardware

A common theme in RPGs is kewl stuff. Tools for lewting some Fools Jewls.
One of the differences between the modern and fantasy genres is that the gear in modern games tends to be more specialised and mission oriented. If the Agency hands you a suitcase that can deploy a parachute, you know that you’re not going diving. At least not from a boat.
Operators also tend to be given their gear from the Agency Techie Squad whereas the fantasy types tend to retrieve it from the still cooling corpses of their foes, or find it stashed in ancient subsurface lewt and monster storage facilities.
In Bandit Country I lean towards the practical. If it exists today and is a proven technology, Bandits can get it. Bandits may work for but are not employees of Espionage agencies. They don’t have all the super high tech gear. The fact is that most official Agents don’t either. High tech gear and deniable action are not all that compatible. It is bad tradecraft to be captured carrying some piece of fancy gadgetry. Better to be treated as a common criminal than an espionage agent.
The other reason for minimising the shiny tech is one of practicality and survivability. Why carry an unproven or fragile technology when store shelf tech can do the same thing. It is a far better solution to have something clunky that works than something shiny that doesn’t.
Most gear falls into the following categories: Weaponry, transport, intrusion , surveillance, counter-surveillance, forensic and communications. All of these categories are well catered to in the civilian market.
A typical cell phone comes with a camera that can take good enough images to copy documents and has low light imaging, bluetooth connectivity and a good battery life. That’s a whole lot of functionality in one unit that is globally innocuous. Insurgents use them to trigger bombs, many have GPS functionality,meaning that they can be used to set targets for GPS guided munitions. Infra red ports can be used to create laser trip wires between the unit and a convenient reflective surface. Many have accelerometers so can be used as motion detectors (eg, put your phone on a wooden floor and if it detects vibration in the floor it sends an SMS to another phone or informs a local bluetooth network). A bunch of cell phones can be distributed to create a cell network if there isn’t one. Nice easy distributed network that can carry data. Place a phone that has a touch screen under a document to be signed and take a digital copy of the signature. I am sure that this is the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with a phone.
The application of deception techniques to commonly available gear can increase utility. This can range from the simple; decant a can of capsicum spray and repressurise it into an empty deodorant can. how many casual body searches will check the contents of the  spray? Make a piano wire garrote out of a retractable ID reel. For a little more complication how about a cover drivers license that has a high quality printed sticky film of a different license on top. When the first ID has been used, peel off the top layer and have another one ready to go underneath.

For my money, this approach to gadgets is more fun. It encourages player improvisation and, even of the results are implausible, it is less likely to break story  continuity.

Direct Action

You can now read and gawk at the Bandit Country RPG using the revolutionary new PDF format.  Indeed.  Permit your eyes to take a short stroll across the screen and, with the assistance of your pointing device of choice, there in the Blogroll section, there it is. Unshackled from the poorly formatted tyrany of html.

Or get it here.