World War Cthulhu: Cold War

OFFICERS, AGENTS AND OTHER SPIES

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As a player you will take on the role of a person caught up in the horrifying events of World War Cthulhu . Though your character may be an intelligence officer, an agent, an assassin, a bureaucrat or otherwise, all characters in Call of Cthulhu and World War Cthulhu: Cold War are called investigators.

The ten steps of character generation are:

Your investigator is part of the Western intelligence services, but also part of something else. After an encounter with something inexplicable and chilling, they have been approached and pressed into working for Section 46 by N, a mysterious spymaster dedicated to eradicating the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, or by one of his associates. All steps within this character creation chapter should aid you in creating an agent in N’s battle against this alien, eldritch evil.

STEP TWO: Investigator’s Age (page 28) Your investigator can start play at any age, and the age you choose can affect their attributes.

The steps within this character creation chapter should aid you in creating an interesting and rounded character, ready for play.

STEP FOUR: Identity and Name (page 29) A name and w here your investigator is from.

STEP ONE: Generate Characteristics (page 28) Begin by determining your investigator’s key attributes, rating features such as strength and intelligence.

STEP THREE: Other Attributes (page 28) Those characteristics that were rolled in Step One, in combination with age, determine other factors, such as how quick your investigator can move and how resilient they are.

STEP FIVE: Occupation, Skills and Trust (page 29) Choose an occupation. Decide whether your investigator is a career intelligence officer or if they had a previous occupation. Assign skill points and determine Trust.

CREATING YOUR INVESTIGATOR Copy a character sheet from the back of this book or download and print it from Cubicle 7’s website (www.cubicle7.co.uk). Now, get a pencil and some dice handy. You may need to do some erasing or changing things around, so it’s a good idea to initially write faintly on your character sheet, or else to make notes on another piece of paper and transfer the information to the character sheet when you are finished.

STEP SIX: Intelligence Agency Training (page 30) This is where your investigator receives the training t hey will need to be an effective intelligence officer. STEP SEVEN: Create a Backstory (page 32) By now you should be getting a feel for who your investigator is. This is where you can go into more detail about various aspects of their background.

This character creation system replaces the one from the Call of Cthulhu rulebook. You can use a traditional Call of Cthulhu character in World War Cthulhu: Cold War , though be advised that such investigators will have fewer skill points.

STEP EIGHT: Brush with the Mythos (page 35) An encounter wit h something strange led to your investigator’s recruitment into Section 46. This is where you define what the nature of that encounter was.

Pg. 41 contains suggestions for bringing existing Call of Cthulhu and World War Cthulhu: The Darkest Hour characters into the Cold War setting.

STEP NINE: Recruitment (page 36) Your investigator has been recruited into Section 46 by the shadowy N. This is where they receive the conditioning that will help them battle the agents of the Mythos.

The process of creating your investigator is presented in eight steps. The process is thorough, and should produce an interesting and rounded character ready for play. If you prefer a speedier method, you may wish to use the QuickFire Method (see pg. 37); it lacks the depth and detail of the full version, but will get you up and running with the bare-bones of a character, which can b e further developed during play.

STEP TEN: Equi pping your Investigator (page 38) Determine what gear your investigator possesses.

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WORLD WAR CTHULHU: COLD WAR

CHARACTER SHEET SUMMARY and Magic Points are determined by a their characteristics and age.

1. Characteristics The investigator’s key attributes, typically rated between 15 and 90.

4. Identity and Name Key details about the investigator.

2. I nvestigator’s Age The investigator’s age can affect their attributes.

5. Occupation, Skills and Trust The investigator’s occupation determines the skills they are trained in. Their Trust measures the faith other agencies put in them – and v ice versa.

3. Other Attributes The invest igator’s Move, Sanity, Hit Points, Luck

4 1

5 6 2

4

3

4

3

3

3

3

5

3 10

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6. Specialism After recruitm ent, the investigator’s agency will train them in a specialist field of intelligence work.

9. Injuries, Phobias and Spells During their conflict with the Mythos, an investigator will b e changed in some way. During play, record these changes here.

7. Backstory Various detail s about t he investigator’s background.

10. Gear and Possessions Equipment and other belongings the investigator possesses.

8. Encounters with Strange Entities Prior to recruitment into Section 46, the investigator had a brush with the Mythos – the first of many, no doubt.

11. Fellow Investigators Record the name s of your fellow investigators here. You may need to cal l out for help during a mission!

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7

9

8

10

10

11 5

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INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

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INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

INTELLIGENCE AND THE COLD WAR

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classic espionage novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , that’s HUMINT. The true tale of notorious British double agent Kim Philby feeding top-secret information back to the Soviet Union? That’s HUMINT too.

Secret intelligence, espionage and covert operations were intertwined with the Cold War like a thread through a tap estr y. Just as the role of secret agents is critical to World War Cthulhu: Cold War , so too were real-life spies crucial to th e conduct of international affair s from 1945 to 1991.

The popular conception of intelligence gathering and espionage is the trilby-hatted agent loitering in an alley in Berlin, awaiting the arrival of a shady contact carrying microdot s and codewords. Most Cold War espionage is not like that.

But as the Cold War progresses, serious money is devoted to more technical forms of espionage. The big gun in all of this is Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT can be broken down into two main disciplines: monitoring communications (COMINT) and monitoring electronic emissions, such as radar (ELINT). For th e Western powers, SIGINT became hugely important because of the Soviet and Eastern European agencies’ (particularly the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi) skill at rooting out spies and double agents (with a few notable exceptions, such as Oleg Penkovsky – who was eventually execut ed – and Oleg Gordievsky, who had to be smuggled out of the USSR in the b oot of a car). Huge, well-financed, se cret organisations such as the British General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, England) and the American National Security Agency (NSA, based in Fort Meade, Maryland) were created to handle SIGINT.

However, the pop ular image does have some ba sis in trut h. Spies, agents, turncoats and moles all come under the heading of Human Intelligence (HUMINT). When we read abou t Jim Prideaux travelling to Czechoslovakia in order to get information fro m a defecting general in John L e Carré’s

As technology advanced, so too does the use of space as an arena for spying. Several countries – especially the United States – invested heavily in Imagery Intelligence (IMINT). From the 1960s onwards, satellites of increasing power and sophistication were lofted into orbit in order to

This chapter outl ines intelligence in th e Cold War, discussing the different forms of intelligence gathering, intelligence agencies around the world and offering insights into some of the ways in which intelligence agencies function in the 1970s.

FORMS

OF I NTELLIGENCE

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observe bot h ally and enemy alike. By the 1970s, the giant America n KH-11 satellites ca n photograph ind ividuals f rom hundreds of miles up in orbit.

clandestine agencies have found themselves exposed in the full glare of the media. The walls of the ‘secret state’ are crumbling, and a new generation of journalists – many inspired by the Watergate Affair that brings down US president Richard Nixon – seek to make the secret world accountable to the public that it supposedly serves.

The use of technology went both ways. Both the Soviet Union and the Western allies seek to gain – by hook or by crook – examples of the latest enemy technology to take apart and study, a process known as TECHINT. A prime example of this is the defection of Soviet fighter pilot Viktor Belenko in 1976. Disillusione d wit h his life, he flew to Japan in t he very latest M iG-25 interceptor aircraft. This gave Japanese and American analysts the ideal opportunity to examine a supposedly fearsome weapon, that turn ed out to be a lot less formida ble than other forms of intelligence had indicated. Finally, there is a form of intelligence that does not rely on satellites or defecting pilots. Throughout the Cold War and up to the present day, states rely heavily on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). By reading newspapers and monitoring TV and radio broadcasts, a considerable amount of information can be collected. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) monitoring station at Caversham Park in Berkshire, England, had a dual funct ion. On the surface, it allowed the BBC to keep track of news happening all over the world. Underneath, it also served an OSINT function too, passing information back to the British Secret Intelligence Services (SIS).

In th e 1970s, Wester n intelligence gathering is dom inated by the Unite d States of America. Most famous (and infamous) of the US intelligence organisations is the CIA. The CIA has wide-ranging responsibilities, from running spies and covert operations, to orchestrating spy plane missions. But it is an agency in crisis.

INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY AGENCIES AROUND THE WORLD

Accusations of abuse of power, infiltration of domestic organisations (such as the anti-Vietnam War movement), the actions of James Jesus Angleton (its paranoid head of counterintelligence – see opposite) and attempts to assassinate heads of state (such as the persistent attempts to do away with Cuba’s Fidel Castro) are investigated by Congressional committees. This results in CIA’s dirty laundry being very publicly aired. The agency is also responsible for serious lapses, most notably the failure to predict the coup in Iran that ousts the autocratic Shah (an impo rtant US ally) f rom power in 1979.

This section discusses and outlines some of the major domest ic and foreign intelligence and security organisations. This is by no means an exhaustive list ing, and the selection tends to privilege the groups that investigators in World War Cthulhu: Cold War are most likely to come into contact with. There were – and are – many, many intelligence and security agencies out there, and covering them all would require a book many times the size of this one. If you are interested in the wider world of intelligence in the Cold War, the bibliography on pg. 232 is a good place to star t.

The CIA is not, however, the only major US agency active during the decade. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) handles military intelligence; the National Security Agency (NSA) is responsible for SIGINT; and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has responsibility for satellite IMINT. All of these agencies – and many more,

THE W ESTERN A LLIES For Western intelligence, the 1970s are a period of crisis and change. This is especially true of the American Central I ntelligence Agency (CIA), an organis ation that was suddenly thrust into the limelight. In Britain too, formerly

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KEEPER OF ARCANE BRIEFINGS •

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From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and apprehension, nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much madness.

chapter (pg. 76) and the Beyond Top Secret chapter (pg. 114), as well as the scenario to be played, if using a prewritten scenario. The other chapters of this book can be consulted as needed.

– H P Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth For your first game, we recommend a scenario that gets the players right into the thick of the action early. Begin with a dangerous situation, then let the investigators regroup in a safe house for a slower build-up to occult intrigue.

Experienced spies know the Moscow rules, shared wisdom about operating in hostile environments (see pg. 51). They hold the keys to success and survival. Rule Three states “Everyone is potentially under opposition control”. This is a terrifying enough thought when dealing with an opponent who plays by rules you can understand. When you are fighting a secret war on two fronts, and your other enemy is ancient, inhuman and impossible to second-guess… Well, there is a good reason that most investigators die horribly or succumb to madness.

PRECEPTS OF PLAY K EEP

IT R EALISTIC

Espionage is a grim, dangerous business even before you introduce the horrors of the Mythos. For all their training and experience, the investigators are only human. They will make mistakes, get injured, lose their grips on reality and, on occasion, die. Their investigations will take them to dark places, force them to deal with unpleasant people and take risks, but there are limits.

GETTING STARTED When starting a new World War Cthulhu: Cold War game, players may select one of the archetypical investigators presented on the Cubicle 7 website, or else create their own using the rules in the Officers, Agents and Other Spies chapter (see pg. 25). Investigators may come from many walks of life. They may already have been part of SIS or an allied agency before joining Section 46, or they may have been willingly or forcibly recruited from the police, military or civilian life. Though they have all had a brush with the Mythos, their depth of knowledge will vary hugely, and they might be walking relatively blindly into the horror. Whatever their background, they have something in common: they are all brave, determined, resourceful individuals who are willing (or, at least, appropr iately motivated) to carry out N’s orders. The investigators do not necessarily know each other well before the operation begins, but may have crossed paths professionally.

The investigators are not James Bond: there are no monologuing villains with comic-book schemes, no secret bases with conveniently placed self-destruct mechanisms and no laser beams hidden in watches that will cut through restraints in the knick of time. This is an unglamorous, secret world where letting your opponents know who you are will most likely get you killed. The Keeper should make the world feel absolutely real, reinforcing the sense of danger wherever possible and never sparing the investigators the horrors of the shadowy world in which they operate.

K EEP

THEM P ARANOID

Players should glance at the Tradecraft (pg. 50), Covert Actions (pg. 132) and Intelligence Agencies (pg. 15) chapters to give themselves a working understanding of the espionage environment. We assume a basic level of familiarity with the Call of Cthulhu rules and style of play.

When on missions, the investigators should live in a state of heightened awareness, never sure who to trust and w ho may betray them. Double agents, informers, counter-intelligence officers, trigger-happy mercenaries, ideological terrorists and nosey policemen pose constant threats to life and liberty. Investigations should be full of lies, half-truths and unwanted revelations.

The Keeper should familiarise themselves with this chapter, the overview of Intelligence Agencies and Section 46 (pgs. 15 and 22), the relevant material from the Intelligence Theatres

Assets may not be who they seem, allies may manipulate investigators in pursuit of their ow n agendas, and even friends will betray one another if the right pressure is applied.

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KEEPER OF ARCANE BRIEFINGS

MUDDY

TH E WATERS

Many of these threats cannot be fought by normal means, or are so dangerous that attempting to do so is suicide. This does not mean that t he investigators will not or should not try, simply that they will not always live to tell of it.

While the two missions that make up most scenarios are usually different, they take place in similar worlds. An informant selling secrets about the locations of Stasi safe houses may also be on the payroll of the Black Brotherhood, or vice versa. The investigators may discover that the terrorist group in the crosshairs have also been carrying out attacks against the Esoteric Order of Dagon, mistaking them for ideological enemies. Unleashing the ancient horror the investigators have been sent to destroy may prove the only distraction available to stop their c apture by the KGB.

The Keeper should play fair, which also means being impartial. Roll dice openly, with consequences clearly spelt out. Resist the temptation to fudge results to spare the investigators. They operate in a dangerous world and they know t he stakes. If they survive, or better, succeed, this will be a hard-won victory, and all the sweeter for it.

The Keeper should always look out for opportunities to present moral conflicts, offer expedient alliances with terrible people or confound expectations about where t he loyalties of an NPC lie. If the investigators ever decide they know exactly what’s going on, they should be frightened that this means they have overlooked something horrible.

DRAW

SECTION 46 Section 46 is the ghost of the wartime Network N, one man’s quixotic crusade against the Mythos. From his club in St James’s, N continues to draw on collaborators to monitor the activities of Western intelligence, secretly using their operations as the means to carry out covert investigations and attacks against occult threats.

FROM H ISTORY

The material in this book takes place over the course of a decade of turmoil and change. During the course of campaigns, regimes will rise and fall, intelligence services will orchestrate coups, armed conflicts will start and end and political ideologies will shift, and the roles of and trust in intelligence services will change. By dipping into the history of the different theatres of the Cold War, Keepers can help bring them to life for th e players, presenting the investigators with a complex world in flux, where today’s ally may be tomorrow’s enemy, and a safe haven can turn into a war zone with little warning.

In the game, Section 46 serves several purposes. •

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G ATHERING

THE I NVESTIGATORS

Investigators in World War Cthulhu: Cold War are all part of N’s secret conspiracy. Section 46 draws the initial group of investigators together, and provides a way to introduce replacements in the event of an investigator dying.

That’s not to say that you should get hung up on or be constrained by historical accuracy. This is a game, not a textbook. The best spy fiction takes liberties with the real world, inventing new factions and conspiracies to create memorable drama. And sometimes even the best Keepers make mistakes! When that happens, either move on and accept it, or retroactively change the offending details, but try not to let your game’s pace suffer for the sake of accuracy.

BE TOUGH

Gathering the investigators. Missions against the Mythos. Dispensing occult lore and clues.

MISSIONS A GAINST

THE M YTHOS

While N no longer commands the same resources he had during World War Two, he still has enough informants around the world to keep him apprised of the machinations of the Mythos. He knows the bars in West Berlin where dangerous artefacts are traded alongside state secrets. He knows the Polish mathematicians whose researches risk opening the human mind to horrors it was never meant to understand. He knows the loc ation of the hidden lake near the Niz hnyaya Tunguska River where pale abominations rise by moonlight. He knows the pirates of the South China Sea who trade captured sailors to Deep Ones in exchange for safe passage. He knows the secret places hidden even from those whose business is secrets.

BUT F AIR

World War Cthulhu: Cold War is designed to be a grim and gritty game, in the purist mode of Lovecraftian gaming. The odds are stacked against the investigators, and while they w ill rarely be involved in open combat with their more human enemies, assassination, disappearances and unexplained accidents are all very real risks. These risks are even greater when facing the forces of the Mythos, which have none of the restraint or professional courtesies of the world of espionage.

N uses his dwindling contacts in the intelligence services to find operations, agents or other assets that can be co-opted

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World War Cthulhu: Cold War

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