Following some discussion and offline character creation, the agents get together in early April 2011. Our dramatis personae:

• S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
• N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Mostly a desk jockey who acts as the ‘guy in the chair’.
• An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker. Easily the most trigger-happy of the group, mostly because he is the only one in the group who can really shoot.
• Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. Is actually deep cover for the Romanian foreign intelligence agency - the SIE.

These first few session reports are based on two published adventures: The Harkness Files and (S)Entries. I have mashed them up, which takes up the first four sessions or so. Spoilers for both of those in these, and for the Dracula Dossier as a whole.

Recap

2011 - April 8, April 9

The whole story kicked off with a contact of Padraig’s reaching out with a plea for help: a journalist, Olivia Yu, has gone missing, last seen in Athens. The Source needs her pulled out, especially the stuff that she has recently been working on. Padraig called in some favours, getting some tech help from Yannis (including tracing the Source to somewhere in the London area), and Coop for some muscle. Petros is a ’nearly local’ expert. They hit the streets on arriving, picked up a few useful tools that would be difficult to get through customs (just a pistol each, the rest of their gear is innocuous). They tracked her to the ferry to Agios Efstratios, which leaves east of Athens. The local security guard mentioned seeing a foreign woman (matching Olivia’s description) who looked a little antsy.

Petros knew a local smuggler (spent some contact points) who could get them there faster than taking the next ferry. On arrivial at the harbour, one thing that stood out was the presence of the HNS Pireaus. This is an oceanographic survey vessel with a crew of about 20 or so. The agents were immediately suspicious about this vessel being present. Again, asking around on the dock, and then getting one of the only taxis in the small town got them a location for the hotel that Olivia was probably holed up in.

They headed over to check it out, discreetly. They set up across the street at a café to watch. Shortly after, they noticed a couple of things: two local guys hanging around outside, and a tourist hanging out in the café near them. They split up a little here, with Yannis watching the tourist and Padraig heading inside to scope out the situation. Coop and Petros waiting for anything notable. Shortly after Padraig gets in and smoothtalks the concierge into giving the room number. Heads upstairs to get into the room next door. Shortly after, the local boys wandered in as well, followed by Coop and Petros.

After some dancing around with a plan to get into the same room as them, they jumped the two. Yannick was keeping the tourist (who had a British accent) outside busy with some inane chatter to prevent him from using the headset he was wearing. Inside, the fight was short, sharp and nasty, with the two locals having no chance against the well-trained agents, Coop in particular. They did not do this before they had searched the room and phoned in a location to someone. So now they needed to head out to find Olivia before whoever the other player in the situation is.

Thoughts and Notes

Some of the planning took a while, but my players like spending a little time doing that. The loose framework of a system that we are using seems to work well - it gives the right sort of cinematic action that I wanted.

PCs seem strong in the areas that they wanted to be. They do not have anything fancy as a capstone, but we are working with an assumption of competence, and leaning slightly cinematic: if the players are suggesting something that Jason Bourne or (the slightly grittier versions of) James Bond would do, then I want to have that be likely to work. This session was relatively low-key.

I am also using skills to award information freely. For something like this, more information will lead to more interesting plans and exciting things to do. Examples here were things like recognising the Hellenic Navy vessel in the harbour (military science), picking up the locals eyeing up Olivia’s hotel (this one went to the PC that was the highest roller on streetwise, but they were not going to not see them). The fight in the corridor was a couple of rolls, with no PCs even getting scratched: a couple of locals are not going to be up to handling well-trained agents.

All in all, a start that I am happy with, and that everyone else seemed to enjoy.

NPCs of Note

• Olivia Yu - US journalist, seems to be targeted by someone
• The Source - Contact of Padraig’s, usually reliable, seems to be somewhere in London?
• Pho - Contact of Petros’, smuggler within the Aegean area
• Hartness - Suspicious British tourist watching Olivia