We recently came back from CottageCon, our weekend of gaming. It was a unique experience in that this was a CottageCon with the smallest of role-playing game footprints. It could have involved zero role-playing games but we did decide to run through the first operation of Nights Black Agents: Solo Ops.
What is Nights Black Agents: Solo Ops
Solo Ops is both a system and three adventures.
The adventures are not a campaign as such. They are more like three operations in what might be a limited series featuring the same character but they are not the entire limited series with a conclusion.
The system is unique to Solo Ops and very different to Nights Black Agents itself which makes the book a standalone book which can be purchased and played on its own.
It’s called Solo Ops because the whole experience is specifically designed to be played with a GM and one player. This makes Solo Ops a unique experience.
The Play Experience
The first operation is pretty much The Bourne Identity but instead of Operation Treadstone you have a vampire conspiracy. The central protagonist, Leyla Khan, even wakes up at the start with amnesia and it’s a factor throughout the operation. Yeah, spoilers, but you learn this pretty quickly and you know going into this game vampires are involved.
Now the challenge of describing the play experience without littering the screen with major spoilers. Rather than focusing on the plot, it’s probably best to focus on the key elements that comprised the experience.
The amnesia is great because it does two things: slowly reveal the back story and relationships and allows the player to form the personality of Leyla Khan themselves as she is a blank slate without actually being a blank slate. Yes, you learn things about past friends, immediate events and the broad strokes of what you did in the past but, at least it did when we played it, the exact contextualisation only happens in the moment. How much of a friend? Was her past life altruistic or only marginally less dirty than serving a vampire crime lord? If these are set out in the book they were left vague in our play so I felt I was deciding the shape of them in the moment and made decisions based on that shape. As an example, in my head I decided Leyla was a James Bond-type spy, so brutal but altruistic, so becoming a mind-influenced criminal was a bad thing not a splitting hairs thing, etc.
The whole thing is very kinetic from waking up in the hospital with only brief respites from action, tense conversations and high-drama decision-making. This whole structure, the amnesia aside, is what makes it feel like a Bourne film. It also meant the scenes framed as moments of respite really work and really feel like those moments in spy thrillers when the hero gets a moment to take stock and maybe reflect on events. When you see actual plays of role-playing sessions the whole experience either has no pace or makes the mistake of just doing things fast which is not the same as a dramatic pace (it’s just a bull rush). When implemented well the setup in the first Solo Ops operation gets it right.
The character stuff is great or at least I thought it was, but then I was constantly contextualising what I knew and what I’d learned with the goal of having Leyla become a stronger, dramatic protagonist in order to make better story decisions around her and have scenes that actually meant something. I’d love to describe some of them and why they work but…spoilers. All I can say is the experience doubles down on desperate groups trying to attain desperate ends, characters acting as potential reflections of the protagonist and doing the whole spy thriller thing of friendships becoming embroiled with dubious morality (assuming this is in the operation and wasn’t a dynamic of those playing it!). When you combine that with the kinetic nature of the events and the decisions it makes those ‘high drama intense conversations’ feel right. If it had been all action it would have failed.
It was about being there not figuring it out which was fantastic. When it comes to actual play I’m not a plan of mysteries to figure out as a player or a GM. I don’t see that process as valuable. What I see as valuable is the reveal or more importantly what happens when the facts are known. This is because I see an intentional story as a series of fateful decisions. The first operation in Solo Ops does this perfectly (as the Gumshoe system is meant to do generally) by never leaving you confused about what to do next. The key thing is doing what you choose to do next and being in situations or talking to people where decisions can be made. It even clearly labels some clues as continuity clues indicating they are about things outside this operation so you don’t go down rabbit holes. Brilliant.
The various cards really work as they do something more than just remind you of how system elements work. They are essentially the cards you’d see on the investigation board of a procedural show but they do even more than that. Problems represent mounting pressure. Contacts represent a growing network of potential. Edges represent potential advantages. The edges marked clues and continuity (clues outside the scope of the operation) are literally the stuff on the procedural board. It’s a great way of keeping the entirety of the mixture of the thriller in play in a visual way.
The sliding doors element is awesome though this isn’t really part of the official experience as such. It’s a 1-1 game and we are both GMs so we’d occasionally discuss the sliding door of a different choice. None of these were spoilers at the moment they were discussed. It’s hard to give an example without crazy spoilers but knowing what might have happened on occasion acted to emphasise the sacrifice or the weight of the choice she had made. I do realise this is unlikely to be what other people playing through it do and we only did it on occasion.
This all worked because it came together to completely deliver a Bourne Identity experience mixed up with a Vampire conspiracy.
The system
I like the system of Solo Ops for a couple of reasons.
In terms of the mechanisms on the character sheet to enact the role of a spy thriller protagonist, I prefer it to full-blooded Nights Black Agents as it is simpler. You can stun each general ability once before a refresh so you just simply tick them off as you go. You can push an investigative ability or use general abilities as a stunt via a push and you start with three of them but you can gain more via exceptional general ability rolls.
I like the challenges, particularly the fact you can accept a problem to gain a die in the roll. I tended to accept the challenges as it felt more spy thriller to me though I was playing a conscious game that added to the tension of not letting my pushes get too low and my acceptance of problems too high.
In truth, the system works similarly to other systems as you can spot parallel elements. The dice rolling mechanic is loosely similar to Powered by the Apocalypse with its three results in a similar die range. The acceptance of a problem is very similar to the Devil’s Bargain that is available in Blades in the Dark. So it’s quite simple to grasp what’s going on and the purpose of each element in the system and the role in the fiction.
I do think a lot of the success of the experience is not the system, albeit I don’t want to diminish its impact. The system itself is enhanced by wrapping the right spy thriller situations and relationships around the constructed operation to drive it forward for maximum impact. While implementation is important in all games I have a feeling Solo Ops has the potential to be a very different experience.
The challenges
There are a few challenges that exist within the set-up that could go very wrong. They didn’t in my experience but it’s more it’s easy to recognise how they could with a different player dynamic and method of implementation.
Clarity of memory. The fact the character has amnesia is a brilliant part of the experience, but it does introduce a challenge. As an example, a few times I wasn’t sure I had the true facts to make the best decision. There were a couple of moments where I wasn’t sure I fully understood the relationship of an NPC to the fiction and my character’s relationship with an important NPC. This isn’t as bad as it sounds as it actually added to the feeling of confusion the main protagonist was potentially feeling while being under pressure to make consequential decisions. I’d say it’s something to watch out for though as it would be possible for the amnesia to trip over into being a negative depending on how it’s approached and the dynamic of the duo playing.
Extra problems. The extra problems offered in challenges can be a bit random in terms of how serious they are and it’s not necessarily clear from the challenge itself what you’re letting yourself in for. This again is actually a feature as it ramps up the tension but it does potentially open up the game to the player feeling stiffed. This very much depends on the player. I was personally up for all of it and was happy to roll with the punches.
Choose your own adventure. It is entirely possible for the experience to feel like a choose your own adventure book with things happening, challenges coming and there being a limited number of choices and routes forward. I don’t think it has to feel that way. It didn’t feel that way for me but I could see the edge of how it could easily fall into that. There is a lot of effort that has to be put into wrapping the experience into a more intimate, intense and authentic experience of a dramatic story unfolding. If you don’t do that it could come out feeling quite mechanical and like a flowchart.
Preparation effort. The way the system is constructed with the use of cards is brilliant in actual play but it significantly increases the preparation effort as all the challenges need to exist along with cards for edges, contacts and problems, etc. If you were to put together another operation in the Leyla Khan limited series you would have quite a bit of effort to construct it all. I’m not convinced a cinematic spy operation has to be so prep heavy but the way the system works slants it that way. It’s sort of anti-zero prep.
As can be seen by these challenges there is a heck of a lot that comes down to execution. Execution is important in role-playing game but I think the way Solo Ops is put together makes it particularly critical.
And, Finally…
Nights Black Agents: Solo Ops is a great experience, especially the first operation. I can’t comment on the proceeding two and I do wonder if they’d lose something divorced from the whole start with a bang and keep on rolling The Bourne Identity setup.
As a singular experience that operation would be very hard to match.
It does all come down to execution on the GM side and the willingness of the player to really dive into the spy thriller genre and consciously work it and construct a character having meaningful scenes via memories and events that are just being revealed with people she is just meeting. I thought that was an awesome part of it.
Great stuff.