I finally got around to running a session of Matt Macell's The Agency last night. We were due to play one of our favourites (Amber Diceless), but one player couldn't turn up and her presence is crucial at the stage we are at in that campaign.

So I turned to my stock of "Indie Freebies" and The Agency sprang out (it was touch and go with my own It's a Dog's Life and Final Stand, by Tim Denee though!).

Anyhow, chargen was straightforward, once I'd briefed the players on the setting (I literally read it from the rules, which provided my players with enough of the flavour of the game but other, particularly American and/or younger players, may need more background as they may be less familiar with British TV of the 60's and 70's)

The players were Nigel (a millionaire racing driver called Oliver Lombard), Jan (an International Fashion Model, called Emma Hunt, AKA "Poppy") and Robert (an overtly camp Haidresser to the Stars, called Quentin Le Clair).

Skill picks were easy, bonuses and flaws came readily to suit the character concepts and all in all chargen took about 20 minutes (including remincences about the TV shows) - fine for a pick-up-and-run game.

I must admit that I haven't looked at the rules recently so while they were discussing their characters, I quickly skimmed the rules again and also I recalled that there were some sample scenario ideas and quickly decided on the first of these (Hex Norton Horror).

It was set at a health club, which in this game was a large house located about half a mile from the eerily weird little English country village of Hex Norton.

The characters went into the house and were met by a stern middle-aged woman I made up on the spot, called Madam Cross. She had "Robert" show them to their rooms. I invented him too and came up with a blond blue eyed young man with a tight tee-shirt and slacks. Two of the three characters showed an immediate interest!

I didn't quite know where to go with Robert, but as the characters split up to look around, Poppy was interested in the staff, so I decided that she had noticed Robert seemingly everywhere around the building. She also went to go through an unmarked door and was stopped by Madam Cross, who told her that guests are "not allowed in there". Quentin, meanwhile was having a massage from a blue-eyed blond guy who resembled Robert but said his name was Jonathon.

Oliver went around the grounds, being watched too closely by the gardner and spoke with two of the guests - a London Banker and his "niece" - who were playing tennis. He also saw some woods at the back of the house, but didn't go in, having recalled that dinner would be soon.

The characters got together over dinner and discussed some of the things that seemed weird, especially the gardner, multiple "Roberts" (one of whom was serving them) and the incident at the door.

Anyhow, to get to the point, you can see that I invented things on "the fly" (to which this game seems well suited), often going along with the players and what they wanted to happen. The rules worked well, but the players seemed loathe to spend karma to describe a scene, so I also allowed them a bit more narrative control where they achieved multiple skill successes. I must admit I am not a very good playtester because I rarely read the rules through and run them "as is", usually looking at the rules for the flavour and then going my own way a little. The best example is that I completely forgot about the awareness/initiative rule and allowed characters to act first in all instances.

There was a point during the evening meal where one of the "Roberts" came in and said there was a telephone call for Oliver at which point Madam Cross came over and had a word with the "Robert" and then told the characters that there had been a mistake - there was no telephone call. This set the characters well on the way into the mystery.

They went to the village after dinner and after a strange situation involving Quentin and a dart board (Quentin is skilled with small sharp objects), the Wealthy Oliver bought a round for everyone and the suspicious locals started talking. They had suspicions about the health club, which was taken over recently by Madam Cross at the same time that the gardners daughter went missing. They also captured a suspicious "city feller" tonight who was phoning the club from the payphone. It turned out to be Simon Drake from the Agency, trying to contact the characters!

Anyhow the whole thing turned out to involve a ruin in the woods at the back of the house, a bunch of cultists, some blond clones (this bit I will use in a later scenario) and the High Priestess Madam Cross, who was going to sacrifice the gardners daughter, in some Eldritch-Horror-Summoning-Ritual. Of course the heroes prevented this, with judicious use of their combat skills and (at last) their Karma.

It's not clear in the rules whether positive or negative Karma is carried over to other scenarios, but I decided it would be, so Oliver is left on -1 Karma for the next game (he used a point of karma to empty his Walther PPK into a dozen advancing "Roberts" - hitting and killing 5 of them (5 bullets left at that point) and causing the others to stumble or halt momentarily so he could get away).

All the players enjoyed the game, so we'll be playing again in the New Year. I will try to stick more closely to the rules as I appreciate that this might Matt to iron more of it out. I have left a similar post on Matt's own forum at http://www.realms.org.uk/, where you can also download a free copy of the game.

Simon
http://www.geocities.com/dogs_life2003/

So, what do you think the players enjoyed most about play? Was Karma used a lot then (sounds like it was)?

Mike

Well, they liked the very simple chargen and the one-page character sheet (which I printed out in A3 - being a fan of minimal character sheets myself). This was particularly important as a potentially one-off game session.

In the end and after much cajoling from me they used karma to do some cool things, but I think the restraints of some of the other RPG's (d20 and the like - not that I'm necessarily against these) rather shackled their thinking for a while, until they realised they had some control over events.

I'd like them to do a bit more with karma next time - Nige I think used it twice, Jan only the once and Rob not at all, athough he had a good skill roll with "sharp pointy things" (with 4 successes) and I let him take narrative control here, which he described bouncing his dart off several surfaces, skewering the flight of the dart in the protagonists hand and pinning it to the bullseye!

They loved the setting in particular and although the background in the rules is sparse, anyone with knowledge of the TV shows will immediately pick up on it. It probably needs expanding on though and Matt tells me he has done this.

Can't wait for another session.

Simon

your message is too long!!!! I made it like a quarter of the way through!! A suggestion from myself being a book author is if you are on internet writing dont go into extreme deatail, it makes you document look boring and people soon get lost. So cut out all not needed things and you will be good!

I'm not trying to write a book! I am not nor have I ever pretended to be an author. The title is "actual play". This is what happened in a game session. Sorry if I bored you but then you chose not to read on, so no harm done.

I can't imagine many game sessions would actually make a good book (or would they, anyone? - there's an idea for another thread, I suppose).

Simon

Hi Simon,

Let me know just a little bit more about the game ... do you think anything was at stake, emotionally, for the players? Or, conversely, was it more like an especially clean and painless version of Call of Cthulhu, in which the goal is to enjoy the genre conventions as such?

By "clean and painless," I'm talking about conducting the rules and getting fictional stuff established. I'm not talking about fates of the characters or graphic content.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

yeah, it was kind of like Cthulhu on speed to a certain degree. I actually thought whilst running it that with a different emphasis and done in a different way, it could have been a Cthulhu scenario.

The players definately felt there was nothing at stake - they were just going to have a good time and nothing was gonna stop 'em! And they did.

Simon

Just to chip in here, as far as the general feel of The Agency goes it's definitely designed to err towards Simulation of a particular kind of TV series.

I like Ron's "quick and painless" phrase here, as that was definitely a design goal. The system should make it easy for players to manipulate and contribute to the imagined space, but in an environment that appears very like a more "traditional" RPG.

-Matt