(Let’s call GMs “The Agency” for a little extra flavor.)

So when you begin a game, you come up with your characters– the stuff I mentioned earlier, you know, your dossier. Everyone plays an Artist or a Lifer, as well as a Civillian who is important to another player’s Professional. Just because you come up with a Civillian doesn’t mean they have to be involved in every job or every session of the game; sometimes it’s nice to have them waiting in the wings for when they’re needed, and some Civillians will turn out to be more important than others. The Agency controls everyone else.

The Professionals are trapped in the same town where the players are playing the game. They’re stuck there after one big job went horribly, terribly wrong, and the Agency blacklisted them as a result. The group can brainstorm the details that the Professionals would already know: where the job took place, what the goal of the job was, what the unexpected issue was that tanked the mission, and how they barely got out alive. Since everything was planned meticulously for a job that big, obviously the job was sabotaged or the team was set up. Throughout the game, the characters will learn bits and pieces of the truth behind that fateful mission, and eventually be confronted with the choice to return to the life of a spy, retire, or something in between.. And then live (or die) with the consequences.

They find out this information in a progression of jobs for folks around town.

When making a job, The Agency rolls a d6 to determine a client:

1. Dirty Gone Clean
2. Innocent Bystander
3. Fall Guy
4. Justice Seeker
5. One of the Professionals
6. One of the Civillians

There’s always a bad guy who’s the entry point into the operation. The team will have to do some recon to figure out who it is and come up with a plan to exploit the person, but for the general template of the Mook, roll another d6:

1. Club Kid
2. Hired Muscle
3. Suit
4. Con Man
5. Zealot
6. Honeypot

And finally, roll a d6 to find out who the Boss will be. Sometimes they know it upfront, and sometimes it’s dramatically revealed later. Which works best for you should be obvious (ie, the Sleeper isn’t known from the beginning), or you can decide it later:

1. Magnificent Bastard
2. Old Friend
3. Agent
4. Sleeper
5. Mastermind
6. Crazy

Once The Agency has got the basic idea of what the job is, play can begin.

Next: a breakdown of the three types of scenes.

Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth