Firstly, it’s worth reading A Discovery of Tradecraft if you haven’t done so already. The article deals with Tradecraft in general, but it angles toward its value for plugging the gaps in Abilities.

What is a Mark?

I recommend thinking of a Mark as plot armour or steps toward finding a means to defeat an enemy or obstacle (in the example from A Discovery of Tradecraft, Gallowglass is not strictly an enemy, but while he distrusted Matthew for consorting with a witch, he wasn’t going to be any help).

It often happens in books or TV that a series has an enemy that appears and faces off against the good guys but isn’t defeated in one encounter. Imagine a series where a vampire is the enemy.

You need to:

• Rob the creature of the earth from its resting place [Magic],
• Discover the cult protecting the creature [Access], and
• Have possession of a special mirror to reveal it isn’t human [Kit].

You need to have all of these things sorted BEFORE you can fight and destroy it, and each Mark is bought by expending that type of Tradecraft.

Wrong Again

A common question is what happens if you start a mission, but make the wrong choice of Tradecraft. And how do you know what the right one is, anyway?

Well, that all becomes part of the investigation/adventure, as the Agents uncover the vulnerability, assistance, and/or means of identification to handle a threat. These don’t all come at once.

Effectively, realising that the vampire might have a vulnerability, as explained above, means that for Session Two, the group chooses Magic and then depletes the Mark to acquire the specific knowledge during the course of play.

What about session one? What happens when you don’t understand the true nature of the threat?

Well, most of the time, you have to assess the proposition and hope you choose well. But, you cannot be certain that you will choose the perfect Mark. It’s the responsibility of the Game Moderator to play the part of the “handler” for the briefing — whether that’s Mister Garland, a minion of Walsingham’s secret service, or somebody else — offering what foresight they can in explaining the mission. There’s no imperative to state you’re up against a vampire. Or, maybe the signs point to a vampire-like creature, but the truth of it is that a Zmaj Vuk lurks behind the scenes.

A Plan of Action

But, for the moment, assume that it is a vampire, Session One might just turn up a plan of action without real progress being made toward defeating the creature. If you choose Kit for Session Two, you might acquire the mirror. Access? You work out what cult is assisting the vampire, and find a way to neutralize their involvement.

In the end, it will take four adventures to resolve the story, but you might have other adventures in between. Imagine that this is like TV, and there are eight episodes, perhaps, but only four of them feature the vampire. The rest might reference it, but it doesn’t make an appearance.

That said, even if the vampire doesn’t make an appearance, you can still strike off the Marks if the events in those adventures allow. It’s a narrative flow that both the table and the GM should support. It’s meant to be a way to battle an enemy that cannot be laid low by force alone but by the clever accrual of items and knowledge defined as a mechanic within the game.

For the former, The A-Team occurred to me, for some reason, though I can’t account for the precise connection. I had the notion that Saturday afternoon serials had this tendency to gift their characters with talents and connections that didn’t survive beyond the end of the episode.

The latter might well be the montage breakout from The A-Team as well, but it also connected to the notion that often players can’t account for all variable, and sometimes survival depends on pulling a rabbit from a hat. The revelation that saves their skin against an enemy. On the other hand, I also had the notion of End of Level Bosses from platform games that you can’t quite defeat on the first meeting — they survive to return later… and then again after that. You have the chance to recoup and find new weapons and power-up in the meantime, learning from your experience fighting the first time.

A Discovery of Witches

It features in the Recommended section at the back of the book. Season 2, that is. Watch the whole series at your own peril. If you haven’t watched it, do. If you plan to and don’t care for vague spoilers, don’t read on until you’re around Episode 3 or 4.

As an example of Tradecraft, here’s a quick (and inaccurate) synopsis of Episode 2, as a session of The Dee Sanction:

Diane and Matthew start their session of The Dee Sanction. They have been challenged with finding an answer to the question of Diane’s shadowy past and seek The Book of Life to bring clarity — Diane’s very existence otherwise might bring more terrors upon the Realm than the Pope, and King Philip combined.

The players chat and decide that their efforts might best be served by choosing System as their Tradecraft. While the who you know of Access might seem a possibility, it feels like what matters more to influence some obvious parties who could offer assistance.

In an encounter with Father Hubbard, Matthew chooses Politics as a weak spot in the teams’ Abilities — he uses the General Ability approach of Tradecraft to account for that. He manages to convince Hubbard that actions of the past might be resolved by reinforcing the relationship between Matthew’s family and Hubbard empire within the capital.

Over the course of the adventure, Diane uses Politics to swing both the Queen herself and John Dee to believe that a trip to Bohemia to see the Emperor might be worth their patronage — in both cases swinging the power of the Book of Life itself as a lure on the hook and indicating the value in asserting waning influence and power.

In the end, Matthew actually chooses to Deplete the Tradecraft, trading it to remove the Mark that would otherwise make his old companion in witch-hunting, Gallowglass, an enemy. The Mark dissolved, Gallowglass is turned — the GM and Players alike make notes on this point. For the GM, that change in balance will affect future adventures.

As it happens, the Depletion of the Tradecraft before the conclusion of the adventure means that neither Player has the know-how to de-rail Cecil’s suspicions or counter Hubbard‘s decision to raise the attention of Matthew’s father to his consorting with witches. But, perhaps the alliance with Gallowglass will make the difference.

Next Time

There. I hope that that makes some sense. As I say, I can’t ensure understanding in a single example, but I’ve tried. Oddly, I think there might be another comparable example if I walk through the plot of The Expendables 2.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.

[ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī ]

Power and objects walk hand in hand. For some, the power imbued within an object arose from association. The very contact that an item had with an individual of significance left a residue or some echo of their soul. Like the bonding of a witch with a familiar or the harmony sought between a gambler and their favourite dice, possession would infuse an object with a preternatural quality accessible to others. If you could find something worn by a saint, then you could leverage the power that the saint exhibited in life. Or at least some aspect of it.

Conversely, the very drive and purpose of the seeker might have something to do with the influence of the object. The sinner who seeks to make use of a holy relic will likely find the task fruitless, whereas the faithful will experience something quite different. In some ways, the power might seem to no longer lie with the object in that case, but that the object serves as a test of focus and resolve, a mirror to the soul of those who would seek to use it. Therein the words of Rumi echo, for in presenting objects of desire we are tested – and in that test we find those worthy and those solely seeking to better themselves at a loss to others.

Doctor Dee on the other hand seems to have seen something altogether different in the power of objects. Relics and items of power neither possessed the power themselves nor served as key to the lock of personal potential. Instead, Dee perceived objects as conduits, a means to harness the vibrations or reflected power that permeated the many layers of reality – surging forth through the supernaturall via the application of the intellectuall to manifest in the physicall, the lowest state of all.

In The Dee Sanction, this reflected puissance manifests both in the Tradecraft of Magic, where characters may use objects to further their ends against powerful entities of the supernatural, or they may seek to harness some fragment of an artefacts potential, rather like a grail – unworthy of the greater power of an object but able to channel some minor fragment. The Black Seal of Doctor Dee, for example, serves as a major artefact, one which the player driven Agents will only rarely use themselves and then only as a means to ward fixed areas against ingress and egress. Mirrors of a certain quality, too, will serve as a medium for communication through the divine ether, like telegrams carried on the words of archangels.

Mechanically, using an object with Tradecraft will strike that from the scarce major tool kit the characters have to draw upon as a group; whereas, the application of fragmentary powers will require attunement of some form, specific to the object, and the Challenging a Resource fitting to the task (and set by the Gamemaster). The cost of the Challenge will inevitably drain the Resource, but the specific format (and explanation) of the object may carry with it specifics (in the form of simple Tags) as to the repercussions of failure. Indeed, many artefacts and objects of significance will have keyed random collections of unfortunate side effects and consequences that arise from ill-guided misuse. Agents beware the frivolous handling of potent curios.