Mage: Technocracy

One of Our Agents is Missing

Note: Although assuming the Revised rule system, this scenario ignores elements such as the Avatar Storm and the Umbral Red Star. These are not necessary to the story and had not been introduced into my version of the World of Darkness™ when I ran the game in its original format.

To play this scenario it is assumed that you own or have access to the required core rulebooks. The most essential book is Mage: The Ascension™. It doesn't matter whether it is 2nd Ed or Rev Ed; the scenario assumes you are using the Rev Ed rule system, but not necessarily the setting. It also assumes that you have The Guide to the Technocracy™, although it may well be possible to play this without the book, with a bit of work. Useful, but in no way essential, books include Vampire: The Masquerade™ and Hunter: The Reckoning™.

History to the Scenario

One of Our Agents is Missing was originally a three-part story designed to be an alternate game to the main game. Much of the first part of Part One: The Spider's Web, The Spider's Thread, dealt with tying in events that had taken place from the main Werewolf: The Apocalypse™ chronicle games from a different point of view. So integral have some of these elements become to this story that they cannot be extricated without a serious amount of re-writing. An understanding of these events is not important but I'll look to explain some of it at a future date. However, it should be noted that one of the stories that inspired this mini-Chronicle was the way in which they dealt with the threat posed in James Moore's scenario, Camera Shy, printed with the Second Edition Werewolf storyteller's screen which was adapted as a filler item. Details of this scenario are referred to second-hand in the publication in the fact that the players posed as aliens to convince the writer, Bruce Donaldson, not to pursue the matter.

Additionally, the rogues that Agent Money Spider are pursuing are otherwise known as Felix and Bob; two NPC bums that until this mini-chronicle were completely mundane, albeit humorous, homeless guys. In the original game the players finally encounter them, but their involvement in the story is actually negligible and this has been taken out of the story here, but the leads are still present.

I then had the opportunity to write an adventure for the roleplaying convention Conception in 2002. Since I already had much of the work done, or so I thought, I figured that I could rework my original chronicle to a stand alone two-part scenario (since the first part dealt with tie-in's to the main Werewolf game). Although it wasn't too difficult to squish the two parts together, I realised that I was seriously lacking a lot of solid leads and investigative work to substitute for the crossover red herrings (for instance, there was a major section where the amalgam go over to Utica, NY and end up indirectly cleaning up after their Werewolf characters' activities). I also felt that I was seriously lacking a large number of hand-outs. As a result, I spent a lot of time researching on the Internet and preparing hand-outs.

I also had no characters since I'd run the game last time allowing the players to create their own characters based around my criteria. Thanks are due to Guy F. Saunders who helped me make the characters, but has, unfortunately, not had the opportunity to play the game yet. He's responsible for the basic concepts of Agents Phosphorus, Rush and Clone and some of their write-ups. I also had some major hitches in that I hit a total mental block on suitable Procedures and Devices. I remember being unsatisfied with the very Mage-like quality of those employed by the players' original characters. For help in this respect I thank the folks alt.games.whitewolf for their input and inspirations.

When I came to write Part Two: The Spider's Trap I realised, with horror, that my notes (usually quite detailed) consisted of about two pages of typed A4 and no hand-outs at all. Most of the major events I had originally told on the fly, but now I had to detail this enough for someone else to run. I ended up doing a lot of research on Mars to attempt to get the climate and feel about right. I additionally had to create a lot of NPCs that I had just improvised the first time round.

I spent a total of 20 hours straight working on the Cast & Creatures Pack containing all the characters, NPCs, etc. Those Pharmacepoist Caffine Plus pills really hit the spot. I hope you appreciate my efforts.

This scenario has since been run at GenConUK 2002 and 2007. It was so popular in 2002 that it sparked its own spin-off with The Vanguard featuring in their own Hunter game (featured on this site).

The Scenarios

This is the Web Edition of the scenario. When it was written for Conception 2002 I included handouts and information detailing pertinent information from the books. Summaries of spheres, protocols, procedures and devices. Because I don't want White Wolf to get annoyed about copyright certain elements have been taken out of this version in the understanding that you have access to the main books. In this way I do not have to repeat the information that you can read for yourself.

The Cast & Creatures Pack

Important: Please ensure that you select "Print Comments" when you print the Character Sheets otherwise the dots and text won't appear on your printout.

While you are not obliged to use the player characters written for the story they have been designed with the story in mind and I hope you will find them interesting enough to use them in your game. However, if you prefer you are welcome to use your own characters in this story. Please note that the absence of a Void Engineer among the characters is very deliberate and it is perhaps best that if designing your own characters you retain their absence from the amalgam.

If you decide to use my pre-generated characters you can feel free to continue using them in your games. I quite like them and I might ressurect them one day for another adventure.