Night's Black Agents (role-playing game)

Night's Black Agents is a role-playing game created by Kenneth Hite and published by Pelgrane Press in 2012.

There are special combat and chase rules to reflect the action-adventure espionage techno-thriller genre that provides its backdrop.

The first two, supernatural (magical creatures from myth and legend), and damned (humans cursed by God or "blessed" by the Devil), resemble conventional vampires.

They are divided into Dust (gritty techno-thriller), Mirrors (paranoid bluffing, double-crosses, and manipulation), Burn (pushing the characters to their mental and emotional limits until they crack), and Stakes (monster-hunting action-adventure).

They uncover nodes of the conspiracy through investigating it, gradually giving them an outside-in view of its workings.

However, just like a mortal government or organization, the vampire conspiracy can use propaganda, deception, and manipulation to mislead or misdirect the characters.

Investigative abilities (like diagnosis, streetwise, and forensic pathology) automatically uncover clues related to that skill.

The levels in the skill form a point pool that can be spent to expand upon the basic information revealed.

Characters begin play with base scores of one in their streetwise and tradecraft investigative abilities, indicating their training and experience.

The levels in the skill form a point pool that can be spent to meet or exceed a success threshold.

This encourages a player to sometimes put extra exertion or effort into their character's actions without knowing if it will pay off.

Characters with a pool of 8 or more in the Hand-to-Hand general ability can spend 6 points per level to take Martial Arts training.

This allows two characters to work together to achieve the same goal by each contributing a specific ability to perform the action.

It has a base score of 4, but players can spend a general character point per level to raise it.

Sources of Stability are three things that calm and center the character – symbol is an item, solace is a person, and safety is a place.

Awarding a trust point to a group member makes it easier for the player's character to aid and assist them.

Night's Black Agents was written by Ken Hite, and published by Pelgrane Press in 2012.

The Dracula Dossier expansion, comprising Handbook and Unredacted, was the result of a very successful Kickstarter project that brought in £87,935 (or just over US$138,000 in 2014).

The publisher also created and released 7EC-NBACDA/FRA Carnets de l'Agent (English title: Agent Notebooks), a French-language character sheet pack.

The first is a cheat sheet for the Gumshoe system and some of Night's Black Agents' special genre-based rules.

The third and last part is a campaign notebook to record the character's notes on the conspiracy (clues, events, NPCs, guesses about the conspyramid, etc.).