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  The Esoterrorists Scenario Design Notes 
  [Ed. This was originally an internal document not intended for publication, but I thought it might 
  be of interest to any GM designing Esoterrorist adventures] 
   
  Here are some thoughts and guidelines to help you in creating Esoterrorist scenarios for 
  publication. Our understanding of these issues continues to evolve over time, so there may be 
  material in early scenarios that contradicts advice given here. Some of these approaches became 
  consciously apparent to me only after seeing Adrian Bott’s excellent work adapting his scenario 
  from the original Unremitting Horror book to its GUMSHOE incarnation [Ed. To be released in 
  March] 
  Creating Investigation Triggers 
   
  Use the Ordo Veritatis as a narrative device allowing you to insert the characters 
  immediately into the story without the need for elaborate motivation. The PCs’ unknown bosses 
  place them in a situation, giving them the information they need to get started, and off they go. If 
  you’re having trouble getting the characters into the story, you’re probably over-thinking. 
   
  The OV investigates a large number of weird-seeming incidents, including ones with no 
  overt supernatural connection. Anything that induces wide scale cognitive dissonance may be an 
  Esoterrorist plot. (Their success in placing disorienting text crawls under all news broadcasts 
  after 9/11, which had no supernatural component, is a prime example.) 
   
  So it is perfectly permissible to have the OV briefer say: “According to our computer 
  modeling, this Britney Spears serial flashing incident has increased background unease in the 
  population by sixteen basis points. There may be nothing to it, but we want you to check it out 
  and file a background report just in case.” (Presumably the characters get sent on wild goose 
  chases on a regular basis, but since this isn’t particularly interesting, it happens in the 
  background, between real adventures, just like their trips to the mall to buy socks and visits to 
  the dentist.) 
   
  The OV also doubtless maintain various data mining techniques, searching 
  communications for keywords, and may trigger an investigation based on this alone. “This 
  company matches the profile for an Esoterrorist front, and we’ve red flagged seventeen different 
  cognitive dissonance techniques in their advertising. Then, last week, their marketing manager 
  disappeared under mysterious circumstances.” 
   
  Or they may have uncovered intelligence, the sources of which they can’t reveal to the 
  team for fear of blowing other agents’ identities. “We have good reason to believe this 
  guy/place/company is hinky, so we’re sending you in to check it out. For operational reasons we 
  have to leave you in the dark, but if our confidential source is correct, you’ll soon confirm his or 
  her intelligence on your own.” 
   
  So you don’t need a monster sighting or dismembered corpse to start an adventure, 
  although those things are cool, too. 
   
  Remember also that it’s okay to portray the Esoterrorists as bold or careless, especially 
  when an operation is already beginning to unravel for them: 
  · 
  they're carefully organized in a cell structure, so that the damage from possible exposure 
  only hits expendable operatives. 
  · 
  they enjoy ordering murders, and look for rationalizations justifying them 
  
   
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  they’re self-centered sociopathic scumbags, who are happily prepared to throw their 
  rivals and lackeys under the bus 
  · 
   in many past cases, they've often gotten as much zeitgeist-damaging bang out of the 
  clean up of an abortive operation as from the operations themselves 
  It's all part of the unusual dynamic where the good guys are more anxious to cover up 
  the crimes than the people committing them. This is a distinctive element, so don’t be shy about 
  playing it up. 
  The organizational structure of the Esoterrorists should remain somewhat shadowy and 
  undefined, because it’s more menacing that way. The players should believe them capable of 
  anything, even if they’re not.  
  The conspiracy adapts and changes in response to OV countermeasures. They can be 
  compared to post-Afghanistan Al Qaeda, in that they have a fugitive, hard-pressed command 
  center using quasi-covert means to communicate with small, highly autonomous operational cells 
  who are unaware of one another. However unlike Al Qaeda, no one knows who their ultimate 
  leaders are.  
  Local cell leaders act with considerable autonomy. There may be someone up the chain to 
  see to their murders if they screw up, but if they’re caught, they have little to reveal about the 
  higher-ups. Many cells may be connected to the main leadership by ideology alone. Despite 
  ongoing OV efforts to block communications, any lunatic with a web connection can find 
  Esoterrorist propaganda and the inspiration to self-start his own operation. The rich, twisted and 
  alienated are disproportionately represented in their ranks, so they can have whatever real-world 
  resources you need to make your stories work. On the other hand, if you want to do a scenario 
  where isolated backwoods rubes who barely have running water are conducting an Esoterror 
  operation, that works, too. 
  Making Plots Specifically Esoterroristic 
   
  The Esoterrorists is an unusual setting for an RPG, in that it’s intentionally narrow in 
  focus.  Most settings instead offer complicated, wide-ranging settings supporting a huge number 
  of potential campaign premises (even if most groups actually play the default premise.) In this 
  way, The Esoterrorists is more like a tightly focused mainstream media property than an RPG 
  setting. 
   
  It is also meant to be highly accessible, so that if a GM prefers a pre-existing 
  contemporary horror investigation setting, she can adapt Esoterrorists material and techniques to 
  it with a minimum of tweaking. 
   
  That said, there are a few distinctive elements in the Esoterrorists formula, and these are 
  worth playing up, because they may result in fresher content. 
   
  Always find a way to introduce the idea of manipulation of the zeitgeist to the 
  Esoterrorist plot. A great Esoterrorist scenario is a novel mix of elements from real world news 
  and headlines with standard horror tropes. When introducing weird or supernatural elements, 
  ask yourself, “How can I make this shockingly real and current?” 
   
  Another important distinction from Delta Green, Chill, and other similar settings is that 
  the bad guys are very sharply limited in what they can pull off, supernaturally. They can 
  summon horrible creatures, and that’s about it. Perhaps they can use the changing zeitgeist to 
  change physical reality in a way that does not overtly appear to be supernatural in any way. For 
  example, they might be able to ritually channel peoples’ growing fear of global climate change to 
  accelerate global climate change.  
  
   
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  However, they are not sorcerers and can’t throw lightning bolts, kill at a distance, read 
  minds, or whatever. This is to preserve the investigative aspect of the game, so that the reality of 
  physical evidence isn’t thrown out the window by the presence in the setting of efficacious 
  magical effects. When players encounter a locked room mystery, they can be confident that the 
  bad guy hasn’t just teleported out or flown off the balcony. 
   
  Future iterations of GUMSHOE may include forensic magic, along the lines of Randall 
  Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, but this is not a feature of The Esoterrorists. 
  Clues 
   
  The whole point of the system is to make clues easy to acquire, so that players can get on 
  with the fun of figuring out how they fit together. Facilitate this by making choices that get 
  information into the hands of players. Habits die hard, so make sure you’re not slipping back into 
  the old paradigm and making the clues hard to get. 
   
  Some things should go without saying, but don’t. Suggest alternate abilities which can be 
  used to gain clues. Encourage creative ability use. Remind GMs that they can use abilities in 
  unconventional ways. Any credible attempt to get information that would yield a given clue 
  yields that clue, whether or not this is the ability you’ve specified in the scenario.  
   
  Remember that clues needn’t all lead directly to the solution of the mystery. They can 
  provide information that makes an encounter more interesting, or gives the character a small 
  victory unrelated to the main plot line. They can confer advantages on later general ability use. A 
  spend in Cop Talk, for example, might allow you a combat advantage against a rogue police 
  officer, because you took the same martial arts courses he did and can anticipate his moves. 
  Avoid spends which stack on other investigative abilities, because these make it harder to gather 
  needed clues. 
  Alternate Structures 
   
  One gamer bugaboo we keep running into is the fear of being placed in a linear structure. 
  This is often more a matter of perception than reality—witness our playtest experience where the 
  groups whose GMs did the most improvising were the most likely to think they were being 
  chained to the scenario as written. Nonetheless, it is useful to do what you can to show that your 
  scenario can successfully unfold in a number of different ways. 
   
  Whenever possible, illustrate this my mapping out various orders in which the clue-
  gathering scenes can occur. Show that general action scenes can occur at different times, 
  depending on the GMs need to inject excitement or keep the story moving. Add optional 
  sequences to help GMs improvise. Suggest possible tangents interested groups might have fun 
  pursuing. Provide alternate endings. 
   
  The downside of all of this is that it takes space, expending precious word count on 
  scenes that only some groups will use. But, as it is something we keep hearing, and so should 
  continue to address.  
  Player-Facing Rolls 
   
  Unlike other systems, GUMSHOE is not a simulation in which PCs and GMCs are 
  mechanically equal. Because protagonists and supporting characters have different structural 
  roles in the creation of an investigative story they have different mechanics to support them. 
  
   
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  GMCs should never roll independently of the PCs to determine whether or not 
  something happens. For example, there is no need for them to make Stability rolls, or to have 
  other decisions or behaviors determined by die rolls during play. If you think it’s interesting or 
  necessary for a character to go nuts if condition Y is met, just say that it happens. Where possible, 
  see to it that player decisions determine whether condition Y occurs. If it’s not interesting or 
  necessary, there shouldn’t be a chance of it happening. 
   
  Where the responses of supporting characters ought to be variable, find a way to trigger 
  them by rolls or spends made by the players. Make them player-facing, in other words. 
   
  Let’s say the arms dealer the players are interrogating has a chance of panicking midway 
  through the exchange and attempting to swallow a cyanide pill. A traditional way to do this 
  would be to have him make a confidence roll or something like that. 
   
  The GUMSHOE way to do it is to make his decision incumbent on what the players do. 
  You could: 
   
  Call for a Shrink roll to keep him calm. 
   
  Allow for both Intimidation or Reassurance as ways of getting him to talk, but 
  (after giving the players an indication that one choice is better than the other) 
  having him freak out if it’s Intimidation they used. 
   
  Have him remain calm on a Reassurance spend. 
   
  Have him remain calm if they remind him of his mother, who (if they were 
  smart) they befriended during the previous scene. 
  Statting GMCs 
   
  Because GMCs are not congruent with PCs, you don’t have to provide more than a 
  handful of stats for them. They are generally not investigative characters, so you although in a 
  very few cases (cops and so on) you might want to include academic or technical investigative 
  stats as a point of comparison. A PC might want to know whether to be intimidated by the 
  credentials of the FBI profiler he’s consulting, or to regard him as a well-meaning novice. 
   
  Interpersonal stats are never required. When GMCs are likely to be lied to by the PCs, 
  provide textual guidelines on how gullible they are and what deceptions they might be either 
  impervious or susceptible to. (PCs might be able to figure this out in advance of their deceptions 
  with Interpersonal spends.) 
   
  Stability can always be omitted. As mentioned above, incidents involving GMC stability 
  should instead be converted to situational events or player-facing spends and/or rolls. 
   
  Supply other general abilities. Provide other tags or identifiers (like the Worst Thing I 
  Ever Did or character stereotype from GUMSHOE Horror) if you think they’re helpful to GMs in 
  playing the characters. Avoid information overload by only providing data points that might 
  actually come into play in the scenes in which the GMC appears.  
    
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Esoterrorists/The Esoterrorists Scenario Design Notes.pdf