Cabal

An RPG of
Corporate
Conflict
by Andrew Peregrine
Jeremiah Gutierrez (Order #26536437)
 CABAL
Cabal (noun): A secret political clique or faction
(archaic): A secret intrigue

Written by Andrew Peregrine

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 CABAL
Example Organisations by Angus Abranson, Cam Banks, Kristian A
Bjørkelo, Stuart Boon, Chad Bowser, Jennifer Brozek, David F Chapman,
Walt Ciechanowski, Jason Durall, Lynne Hardy, Chris Hartford, Nimrod
Jones, Andi Newton, Darren W Pearce, Nick Robinson, Gareth Ryder-
Hanrahan, Ken Spencer, Monica Valentinelli, Luca A. Volpino

Art by Aaron Aurelio Acevedo (p2), Ben Allen (p32), Christopher

Balaskas (p66), Mark Hiblen (p36, p39, p50, p56, p74), Jon Hodgson
(p44), Linda M Jones (p58), Symon Leech (p103), Evgeni Maloshenkov
(p116), Patrick McEvoy (p10), Gillian Pearce (p63, p84), Alrissa Sia
(p16)

Layout by Andrew O’Hara

Graphics by Paul Bourne
Proofreading by Annie Percik
Campaign Videos by Jon Hodgson
Playtesters: James Holman, Andrew O’Hara, Greg Seales

All other images (including cover) from Dreamstime Stock Pictures

Cover ‘Dark City photo’ © Grandeduc | Dreamstime.com

Cabal RPG © 2017. This book, including all concepts, characters, texts
and intellectual properties © 2017 Corone Design.

Any unauthorised use of copyrighted material is illegal. Any trademarked

names are used in a historical or fictional manner, and no infringement is
intended.

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 This version of Cabal would not be possible without the support of my
Kickstarter backers. My many and heartfelt thanks to every member of
the backer team:

Board of Directors (CEO)

KICKSTARTER SUPPORTERS

Victor Aliffi, Nancy L Berman, Thomas Eilert Bonden, Xavier Brinon,

Andreas Brömster, Robert Carnel, James Carus, Dávid Csobay, Korey
Enright, Mattheau Fain, Fabrice Gatille, Nicholas Green, Christopher
Gunning, Terrence Patrick “MAGI” Joseph Micheau, Ronin Lore, Dan
Massey, Michael S Mears, Patrice Mermoud, Matt Murray, Matt P, Loree
Parker, Jason Robinson, Tom Salisbury, Jamie Sherlock, Anne Stevenson,
John Wick

Executives
Andy Aiken, John “SteelAngelJohn” Aridi, Cirk R. Bejnar, BlackBlood
Raven, Marius Incognito Blomkvist, Dave Brookshaw
Marcelo “The Reckoning” Caraballo, Ettore Carli, Frank C. Carr,
Kristofer Cook, Riley Crowder, Cultist of Sooty, Carsten Damm,
Elsewhere, Jennifer Fuss, Alexander Gent, Jamie and Jonathan Gilmour,
Justin Haynes, Hexeter, Joseph Homer, Sara Hubert, Wade Jones, James
Knevitt, Mathias Koch, Daniel Ley, Heather Mae, Dominic McDowall,
Michael, Stefan Minarik, Quinn C. Moerike, Petros Panagiotidis, Michael
Pietrelli, Mário Portela, William Povey, Luke Rees, Nick Robinson,
Timothy Ryan, Christopher Specker, Derek Cameron Taylor, Jeremy
Taylor, Dana Thoms, Jess Unrein, Trenton Vartabedian, Martin B.
Wagner, Chris Ward

Operatives (Corporate Raiders)

Rob Abrazado, Jordi Aldeguer, Nuno Alves, Omar Amador, Anonymous,
Eric Ausley, Alan Bahr, Phillip Bailey, M.H.J. Beaujean, Claire Bennett,
Cody Black, Dave Blewer, Nick Brooke, Darren Buckley, Ryan J Burke,
Bushy, Andrew Byers, Clint Cachia, Caldazar, Stefano ‘stec74’ Carluccio,
Benjamin Chee, Ugo Cimone, Andy Clark, Eden Cohen, Alistair
Collins, Igor Comunale, CoolFr, Chris Cooper, Jason Corley, Richard
Cowen, Mark Crew, Merry Crystal, Jean-Christophe Cubertafon,
Scott Cuthbertson, Zachari Dahran, Robert and Amanda Daley, John
Dawson, Yohann Delalande, Jim DelRosso, Jeff Dreher, Robin Droste,
Noah Dudley, Saul Dudley, Duncan and Lorna, Jason Durall, Herman
Duyker, Luc Ebel, Alexander Essery, Andy Evans, Mark Fenlon, Jesper
Fledelius-Gehrke, The Fox, Jean ALAHEL Fridrici, Jeremiah Frye, Wade
Geer, Lakshman Godbole, Jesse Goodman, Richard ‘Vidiian’ Greene,
Troy “Wrongtown” Hall, Tom Hansberger, Dave “Wintergreen”
Harrison, Chris Hartford, Seth Hartley, Caleb Haskell, Nichole Himmel,
Jon Hodgson, Ray Hodson, Ryan Holdbrooks, B. E. Hollenbeck, Peter
Hollinghurst, Nathan Howard, Joshua Hudner, Quinn Hunsaker, Oscar
Iglesias, Erik Ingersen, Daniel Jones, Simon K, Willy Kaceres, Kalacia,
Marc-Andre Karpienski, Michael Keefer, Logan Kelly, Armin Kessner,
Jonathan Killstring, Samuel Klingensmith, Mick L, Michael Laitinen, Petri

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 Leinonen, Peter ‘Malkira’ Lennox, Patrick “Panda” Leonard, Jonas
Lowery, James MacGeorge, Mad Mullah Hastur, Steve Mains, Dennis
Malloy, Chris Manning, Mark, Kat & Libby, Tommaso Matelli, Thomas
Mauritz, Adam D. Maxwell, Matthew McFarland, Shane Mclean, Merlin,

KICKSTARTER SUPPORTERS
Nicole Mezzasalma, Joel Mills, Mr Fizzgig, M. Sean Molley, Georgia
Moody, Oliver Morris, Aaron Mosier, Josh Mosqueira, M. Trout, Rob
Nadeau, Dr. NAKAGAWA Kozi, Rick Neal, Adam Neisius, Daniel
“Guardian” Neugebauer, Luca Neukom, Chris Nienhuis, Daniel O’Brien,
Aleana Ozlin, Ignasi P, William Palmer, Jonathan Pay, Ryan Percival, Peter
Peretti, Angie Pettenato, PickleTheCat, Pookie, Simon Proctor, Quorum
Of 4, Jeff Patterson, RAMJAC Corp, Rami Rautkorpi, [Redacted],
Mark Redacted, Paul S Richardson, James Robertson, Jacob Rodgers,
CJ Romer, Joseph A. Russell, Runeslinger, Sanchit, Gerry Saracco,
Jonas Schiött, Allan Schnoor, Christopher Schroeder, Andrew Shell,
Mike Shema, Jeremy Siemon, John Smith, Sellers Smith, Tegan Smith,
Chris Snyder, Dave Sokolowski, Richard W. Sorden, Luke Steenberg,
Jan-Hendrik Strenzke, Bill Sundwall, SwiftOne, Craig T, Neal Tanner,
Ezekiel Terwilliger, Luc Teunen, Stephen Thomson, Drew Tuttle, James
Unick, Adam X Vass, Chris Venus, Vevaphonics, Corey Watson, WillIam
“Dubmun” Munn, Frank Wisnes, With cool pattern, B. Wlodarczak

Agents (Digital Wage Slaves)

Michael Addison, Adumbratus, Mauro Adorna, Harry Aickin, Alce
the Necromancer, George C Alexander, Aljen, John J. Allen III, Justin
Alexander, Mikael Andersson, Vincent Arebalo, Daniel Armstrong,
AYUKATA Taka’aki, Richard Baldwin, Douglass Barre, Greg Bartman &
Bartman MMA, Jason E. Bean, Ozzy Beck, Quentin Bell, Kev Bertwistle,
Alexander Biezenski, ‘Bookmark’ Ana, Nathaniel “Spartacus” Bowers,
Dave Bozarth, Simon Brake, Javier Brauns, Justin “Bonzo” Bridges,
Klaudia Brochs, Rob Bryngelson, Nicholas Caldwell, Mark Carter,
Jonathan Castro, CC, D J Chay, Kasper Christiansen, David Christoph,
Lauren Clark, Neil Coles, Ben Collier, Nick Colombo, Alexander R.
Corbett, Charles Cordingley, Umberto Costa, Jeff Craig, Charles
Crowe, Dadalos, David Dalton, James Dillane, Dany Dion, John
“millionwordman” Dodd, David Dorward, Adam “Secret Government”
Drew, Ben ‘Aileander’ Drew, Chris Edwards, Raphael Ekiert, Tim Ellis,
Epistolary Richard, Benjamin Essex, Don Falche, The Falling Dream, Ian
Finney, J M Flint, Derek Floyd, David Howard Foster, Phil Francis, Franky,
Fridayknight, Helmut Fritz, Richard Frolkovic, Daniele Fusetto, Bacsai
Gábor, Angel Garcia, Jonny Garcia, Colin Gliddon-Brown, Mark Goldrick,
Ryan Graham, Dragon Graygol, Pete Griffith, Aaron Griffin, Ravi Aerel
Grossi, Gulix, Anton H, Hamildy, Arne Handt, Matt Harrop, Happy
Bowl, JMH621Nova as Jonathan M. Harris, Patrick & Samantha Harris,
D. Ariye Harrison, Ian Hart, Hidetoshi Hayakawa, Julian Hayley, Silvio
Herrera Gea, Cam Herringshaw, Tom Hoefle, Wictor Hoffman, James
Holman, Michael D. Holman, Wade Holmes, Ian Howard, Howlykin,
Hsieh, Wei-Hua, Paul Hudson, Caitlin Jane Hughes, Justin Hui, Colleen
Hume, Inga Indrasiute, Isnigu, Itarun, Chris Michael Jahn, Dani Jang, Javn,

5
Jeremiah Gutierrez (Order #26536437)
 Daniel Jay-Dixon, S. Jewett, Paul Johnson, Brad Johnston, Paul Jones,
Sigurdur Jonsson, Jacob Jørvang, Rob Justice, Gregor K, Achim Kaiser,
Rost Kaniuchenko, Boris Karl, Thomas Katzinski, John D. Kennedy,
Sören Kohlmeyer, Wilhelm Kugelberg, Janne Kuosa, Lai Ling Ling, Marvin
KICKSTARTER SUPPORTERS

Langenberg, Eloy Lasanta, Mark R. Lesniewski, Chris Lewis, Kevin

Lovecraft, Jeffrey D Lowe, Ben Lubetkin, Cooper MacDonald, Seonaidh
MacDonald, Fabrizio Mafessoni, Robert Mahoney, Robert G. Male,
Mark, Alexandre Maron, Jenn Martin, Gareth Marshall, Jams Mastodon,
David McWilliam, Mikailos, Stefano Miorelli, Go “Dead Dog” Miyauchi,
J Moore, David Moretti, Marcus Morrisey, Anthony Mugianesi, Stefan
Mühlinghaus, Julius Müller, Warren P Nelson, Kayne Newell, Philippe
Niederkorn, Matt Nixon, Adam Säl North, James Ojaste, Old Bacon
Eater, Omega Advocate, Brad Osborne, Otakuthulhu, Ouroboros, Mr
Pain, Saajan Patel, David Paul, Chris Payne, Peanut, Gabriel Pellizzaro,
Pablo Pérez Gómez, Anthony Perkins, Pete Petrusha, Angelo Pileggi,
Adam Phillips, John M. Portley, David L. Pulver, Sir RageALot, Joshua
Ramsey, Ravnos Phantom, Regis Renevey, Benjamin Rhodes, Laurie Rich,
Jimmy Ringkvist, Ripley, Richard Robertson, Scott E. Robinson, Gonzalo
Rodriguez Garcia, Siôn Rodriguez y Gibson, Rachel Rogers-Rodgers,
Christopher Rusk, Jim Ryan, Craig S, Tommy Sääf, Aaron J. Schrader,
Steven Schwartz, Scorch, William J. Scott III, SDS, Han Shan, Uriel
Shashua, Daniel Shaughnessy, Andrew Sherrington, Skenderax, Adrian
Smith, Winter Smith, Carter Snelson, Trygve Solberg, Some lowlife in the
fluff, Trip Space-Parasite, Veronikis Spyros, Mark Stanley, Borri Stefano,
Sebastian Stein, Gordon Stephen, Gary Stetler-Williams, Joshua Straub,
Matthew Swinburne, Szarkel, Dariusz Szul, Nicolette Tanksley, Jon Terry,
Matt Thomason, Mark Thompson, Tibicina, Timolution, Timothy Low
ZW, Jason Tocci, Turkka, Miika Turtiainen, Petteri Turtiainen, Andrew
Vandeyar, Denis Vermeyen, Chris Vogler, Janne Vuorenmaa, Waelcyrge,
Sam Waldie, Lester Ward, Nicco Wargon, Jamie Wheeler, Stewart
Wieck, Stuart Wilson, Whidou, Jordan White, Jesse Woods, W P,
Xerode, Zeilenrausch

Interns
Angus Abranson, Laura Thomas Barnhart, Leron Culbreath, Nimrod Jones

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 W eb s ites and P atr e o n s
If you’d like to know more about the work of the team behind Cabal,
you can check out more at the following websites and Patreon pages.

CONTENTS
MEETING AGENDA
Writers
Angus Abranson https://twitter.com/Angus_A
Cam Banks www.patreon.com/cambanks
David F Chapman www.autocratik.com
Jennifer Brozek www.jenniferbrozek.com
Nimrod Jones www.zencadet.com
Andi Newton www.andinewton.com
Annie Percik www.alobear.co.uk
Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan www.twitter.com/mytholder
Ken Spencer www.Kenspencer.net
Monica Valentinelli www.booksofm.com
Luca A Volpino www.wildboar.it

Artists
Ben Allen www.behance.net/benecilin
Aaron Aurelio Acevedo www.aaronace.com.
Christopher Balaskas www.artstation.com/artist/balaskas
Mark Hiblen www.facebook.com/MJHiblenART
Jon Hodgson www.jonhodgson.com
Linda M Jones www.sheblackdragon.com
Symon Leech www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Brambledowndesign
Evgeni Maloshenkov https://emaloshenkov.carbonmade.com/
Patrick McEvoy www.megaflowgraphics.com/
Andrew O’Hara www.aoharaphoto.co.uk
Gillian Pearce www.hellionsart.com
Alrissa Sia www.alrissa.com

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 M e e ting A gend a
CONTENTS
MEETING AGENDA

INTRODUCTION 9
CREATING YOUR CABAL 11
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH 17
Logistics 18
Arcane 21
Opinion 24
Employees 27
SKILLS 37
Skills List 40
EMPLOYEES 45
CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS 51
Occupation Packages 53
COMBAT AND CONFLICT 59
Doing Damage 61
RUNNING THE GAME 67
EXAMPLE CABALS 75
Catastrophic Salvation & Salvage, Inc. 76
The Morphean Order 78
Children of Nicholas 80
Techne 82
The Aegis Instrument 84
The Heritage 86
The Ordinary Fellows of Smyth 88
The Octavio Ramirez Society 90
Church of the Arrival 92
Grotius Foundation for Human Rights 94
Dis’kreSHen 96
The Chipping Caldron Tidy Towns Committee 98
Toyosato High School 100
The Midsummer Dreamers 104
Salisbury Seamstresses and Tyson Tailors 106
Gant-Myers-Shotoku Industries 108
The Worshipful Circle of Knitters and Crocheters 110
The Brotherhood of the Depths 112
The Conspirators 114
MISSION SUGGESTIONS 117
AFTERWORD 121

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 I n t r o d uc t i o n

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
Cabal is a game of corporate espionage, big business and conspiracy. Like
any role-playing game, it requires a group of players and a Gamemaster.
However, what makes Cabal different is that the players all play the same
character. Instead of a person, this character is a company, corporation
or conspiracy.

Together, the players form the Board of Directors of this organisation,

one bent on a particular agenda. Its motives are up to the players, who
decide on the sort of missions they will perform to improve certain
aspects of their organisation. The Gamemaster then runs an adventure
that will potentially further the company’s goals, if they are successful.

Obviously, you can’t play an organisation as you would a normal

character. So, to perform missions the players choose teams from within
the organisation to perform the different parts of any given mission.
You may play a team of scientists uncovering artefacts in Borneo, and
then play a military team charged with bringing these artefacts home.
Each team has one member for each player to run during that part of
the mission. How skilled these teams are and how well equipped and
knowledgeable will depend on the resources of the organisation.

S ources of I ns pirat i o n
While there are few stories told from the point of view of an
organisation, there are plenty of tales about conspiracy, corporate greed
and back room politics. Any of the following TV series (and books and
films) should give you a few ideas for both adventures and the sort of
company you might want to play.

Alias, Ally McBeal, Better off Ted, Damages, Dilbert (cartoon), House of Lies,
Hustle, The Illuminatus Trilogy, Leverage, The Newsroom, Nikita (La Femme
Nikita), Parks and Recreation, Robocop, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Suits,
The Thick of it, The West Wing, The X Files, Yes (Prime) Minister, 24

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 10
Jeremiah Gutierrez (Order #26536437)
 C r e at i n g y o u r C abal

CREATING YOUR CABAL

CHAPTER TWO
The game starts with creating the organisation you will all be running
together. Before you start, have a discussion with the group. What sort
of organisation do you want? A military outfit, a business, a conspiracy?
How secret are you, or how influential? If you are a bit stuck for
inspiration, we have provided a few example Cabals later on.

If you can’t think of a global style for your company at the moment, take
some time to look at the various Attributes (see later). If each player
picks a favourite you can begin to consider what sort of organisation
might have those traits, which can help jump start your idea of the
organisation as a whole.

It is also important the players work with the Gamemaster. Don’t

browbeat each other into things you don’t all want. The organisation is
the centre of the game. It defines the range of employees you can play
and the missions you might undertake. Don’t create a mercenary force if
you want to play a political game. Don’t go for a secret conspiracy if you
want to sell stuff or chase terrorists with a pack of gun bunnies. Even if
you disagree about certain aspects, make sure everyone has at least one
thing they are happy with. If a player likes nothing about the company
and has been forced to compromise on everything, they are not going to
have a great game.

Remember, you will probably all have to compromise a little. Instead of

seeing that as a chore, try to be inspired by the creativity of the other
players, bounce ideas back and forth and see what you all think is cool.
Don’t simply decide on what you want and stonewall the rest of the
group.

In fact, these differences of opinion might prove a vein of adventure seeds

that detail rivalries among the Board of Directors. Are the teams going
on missions for the company, or simply to expand the power base of one
of the directors?

When you have a few ideas, the next thing to do is dive into putting some
points down. We’ve organised character creation into a few steps, but
feel free to do them in any order, even skipping back to previous ones.

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 S te p 1: N am e
Simple, really. What is your organisation called? You can leave this to last
CREATING YOUR CABAL
CHAPTER TWO

if you like. Do you have a corporate title like Microsoft, or are you named
after the founders like Sainsbury’s? Does your cult venerate a particular
dark creature from whom you taken a name or are you keeping it on
the down low with a more mundane trademark? Is your name designed
to strike fear into your enemies, or just something nice to go on headed
notepaper?

S te p 2: T y p e o f O r ga n i sat i o n
To help you pick your Attributes, decide on the form your organisation
will take. For example, a business will need money and outlets; a
conspiracy needs influence and secrecy. The following offer some
suggestions, as well as the three most important Attributes they each
might have. You can use these as templates to help jump start your ideas,
but feel free to change their priorities. For all of them, Finances will be a
common priority.

Conspiracy – Influence, Secrecy, Knowledge

Business Corporation – Foundation, Façade, Pressures
Cult – Secrecy, Knowledge, Loyalty
Masonic Society – Knowledge, Influence, Resources
Military Outfit – Resources, Loyalty, Specialists
Media Manipulators – Influence, Prestige, Façade

S te p 3: M i s s io n S tat em e n t
Next you need to decide what your organisation wants or plans to
achieve. Even a moneymaking business will likely have a secret agenda
or two. A conspiracy has nothing but. Decide on a few points that drive
your Cabal. Some examples may be: make money at all costs, rule the
world, control the media, crush our opponents, bring about world peace
or even destroy all monsters.

This will also help you define some of your company’s morality. Few
organisations consider themselves evil, but many are rather uncaring.
Plenty of studies have shown that psychopathic tendencies can be an
advantage in the corporate world. Is this the case for your Cabal? How
far will you go for profit? Will you send in troops so your famine relief
lorries can get where they are needed? Is it really just about ethics in
gaming journalism?

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 S te p 4: A ssign A t t r ibu t e s
Now we get to the meat of character creation. You get to assign 300

CREATING YOUR CABAL

CHAPTER TWO
points among the 11 Attributes. You may assign any level from 1 to 99
to any Attributes (and Finances begins at 20). But beware of putting your
eggs in one basket. If you put 99 points into Finances, you’ll have no
Resources or Secrecy to keep it. There are other companies out there
that will try to pursue their own agenda, and contest yours. If you want
to play a higher-powered game, then the Gamemaster may give you
more points. You can improve your Attributes later on by succeeding in
missions.

The Attributes are grouped for convenience. You need not assign points
to ‘Logistics’ for instance, just Finances, Resources and Foundation, etc.
The Attributes are described in depth later on.

Logistics
Finances How much money you have, or can coerce
Resources How much equipment you own
Foundation The number of bases of operation you have

Arcane
Influence How much political power you wield
Secrecy How well known you are, the real you
Knowledge How much you know about everyone else

Opinion
Prestige How your peers view you
Façade How the public views you
Pressures Control you have over certain commodities.

Employees
Loyalty How much your employees are willing to do
for you.
Specialists How many talented individuals work for you.

You can choose to have a level of zero in Attributes you feel you don’t
need. However, no Attribute can be more than double your Finances,
apart from Loyalty. You need money for just about everything. Because
of this, you begin the game with a base Finances Attribute of 20 for free.

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 S te p 5: C ompan y L o g o a n d U n i f orm / C ol ours
The artistic among you may wish to design a logo. Even some secret
CREATING YOUR CABAL
CHAPTER TWO

societies have one. You may also want to decide what your staff look
like in corporate uniform. Now is also the time to create a few ideas
about how your Attributes manifest. Are your outlets all skyscrapers, or
restaurants? Is your pressure in the tobacco industry or in breweries? Is
your influence with the education board or the defence department?

S te p 6: D e ta i l E mplo y e e s
From your Specialists and Loyalty Attributes you will have some idea of
the people you have working for you. In addition to these people are
the day-to-day workers in your organisation. The secretaries, marketing
people, sales people, technical support people and even arcane research
people. As long as the Gamemaster is OK with it, you can have as many
‘unskilled’ employees as you need to run your organisation. By unskilled I
mean non-specialist. You can have a highly skilled sales team, but even the
best group of sales reps aren’t much use hunting arcane artefacts in New
Mexico.

The Specialists Attribute determines the number of experts you will be

able to send on missions. The more points you have in that Attribute, the
more teams you can field, or the more experienced and skilled you can
make your teams.

If you have no Specialist Attribute (or the wrong sort of teams) you can
still send unskilled general employees on a mission. However, it will not
end well if you send a group of secretaries and sales people on a military
black op. So use the Attributes carefully.

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 D ifferent S tarting P o i n t s
The Gamemaster may have a different idea about the level of play they

CREATING YOUR CABAL

CHAPTER TWO
want to start at. So here are some guidelines for giving fewer or more
than the standard 300 points.

Cottage Industry 100pts

Beginning Corporation 300pts
Experienced Syndicate 500pts
Potent Society 700pts
Global Multinational 1000pts

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 16
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 A t t r ib u t e s i n D epth

ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
CHAPTER THREE
As you can see, the Attributes are the core of the game and your
character. Before creating your Cabal, you should look over the
Attributes in detail to make sure you are spending the right points in the
right places to get the organisation you want to play.
Attributes are broken up into three main groups:

Logistics
Finances, Resources, Foundation
The Logistics group governs the nuts and bolts of the corporation: what
you have and what you can do with it. The Logistics group covers the
mundane attributes of your organisation: how many offices it has, how
much equipment it can get hold of, how much financial clout it has. For
a corporation, Logistics is vital, but for a secret society it may not be so
useful.

Arcane
Influence, Secrecy, Knowledge
The Arcane group is of most use to a conspiracy. It represents the secret
powers and knowledge that go beyond the day to day. If magic is real in
your game, this group covers such occult information. However, even
a mundane company often likes to keep its secrets and know what its
enemies are up to.

Opinion
Prestige, Façade, Pressures
Opinion defines the public face of your organisation: how you are seen
and the influence you wield among other areas. With high levels in
Opinion you can create a public face that covers all your dirty secrets or a
reputation that is the envy of your peers.

Employees
Loyalty, Specialists
The Employees group is just that: how people power is divided in your
society. It also tells you what you can expect from your work force. If you
have a lot of Foundation, that is a lot of workers. We assume you have
as many ordinary staff as you need to keep the company going. So this
group concerns itself with specialists and experts, the stand-out members
of your team with special skills. It also governs how loyal both such
experts and the rank and file of your organisation may be.

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 T he L og i st i c s G r o up
Finances
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
CHAPTER THREE

This Attribute defines not only the money you have in the bank but
also the amount you can coerce through favours and blackmail, etc. It
represents the spending power you have, rather than an actual sum. So,
you can’t expect to get a better Attribute by robbing a bank. You will get
a better Attribute by getting more credit, dealing in shares and increasing
interest on loans you have lent.

Finances is the key to high levels in the other Attributes and its
importance cannot be underestimated. This is why you begin the game
with a level of 20 in this Attribute. Remember, no Attribute can be higher
than twice your Finances Attribute (except Loyalty). Even if cash is not
your goal, it costs money not only to buy equipment but to buy silence
or a good reputation. If your Finances drops, so does this cap, which may
drop other Attributes too.

L o g i st i c s : F inanc es
10 Poverty stricken
20 Most things on loan
30 Balanced, but paying off the starting loan
40 In the black
50 You make huge profits each year
60 Large sums can be lost as petty cash
70 Global banking institution
80 Semi monopoly on your area
90 Microsoft
100 If Koch Industries merged with Google and Walmart.

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 Resources
Resources governs not only the items you have, but also what you can
get hold of. While a high Finances might buy a lot, not all of it might be
able to be liquidated into actual spending power. If magic or super-science

ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
CHAPTER THREE
exists in your game, any such items you want can only be gained if you
have the right Attribute in Knowledge. For military issue items (stealth
bombers for instance), you need a high Influence Attribute.

The Gamemaster is the final arbiter of what you can own. Rather than list
your company assets, use this Attribute to determine how well supported
your teams are for missions.
Remember that ‘what they need’ will depend on the mission. If the team
are a mercenary squad, this will include protection and assault rifles as
well as sidearms, ammunition and possibly explosives. If the mission is
a financial consult, it will ensure the team have a laptop each and a nice
briefcase.

L o g i st i c s : R e s o u rc e s

10 You can supply a pen and paper - as long as they are returned.
20 You can scrounge up enough to do the job
30 You can give them what they need
40 You can supply what they need with a few extras
50 The items they get are good quality
60 Emergency supplies can be sent within a day
70 Helicopter extraction possible
80 Do you want the company jet?
90 Don’t bother signing for it, we can get more
100 Trip on the company space shuttle, anyone?

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 Foundation
Any business needs offices. Even a secret society needs a number of safe
houses. While a safe place can be acquired reasonably easily, Foundation
provides full facilities. The Foundation Attribute also provides ‘Major
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
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Facilities’ that are safe and fully equipped, one for each five points you
have in the Attribute. You can do pretty much anything at such facilities
that you can at your main headquarters. In fact, one of these will be your
main office.

As well as these offices, you might have a number of field offices, little
more than outposts for the company. At such places your teams can find
safety and support, though.

As always, what your offices are capable of providing will depend on your
total level of Foundation. If you have 30 points, that’s 6 major facilities.
However, they won’t be very large, and will have to be quite specialised
to be really useful. Working with the Gamemaster, the players should
take some time to detail where all the major facilities are and what their
function in the organisation is. They might also form the main bases for
any specialist teams.

L o g i st i c s : F o undation

10 One small place

20 A few extra bolt-holes and sub-premises
30 A good headquarters with a couple of other offices
40 Offices in a couple of cities
50 Offices in several cities
60 An office or two abroad
70 An office in most major cities worldwide
80 An office in all major cities worldwide
90 Have you visited our Amazon jungle Oobu tribe offices?
100 Hundreds of buildings worldwide

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 T he A rcane G roup
Influence

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CHAPTER THREE
Influence shows the sway you have over your own and other
governments. You are never elected to political office; you attain this
power through bribes, donations, blackmail and even threats. You are the
spook in the system. However, you need an extreme level to command
people to act against their morality and beliefs. This works as a nudge
here and there, a forged signature on the right document, a favour owed
and the right people turning a blind eye.

Exactly how much power you have is, as you might expect, defined
by the Gamemaster. They are the final arbiter on what you can and
cannot get done using Influence. Remember that there are limits to
even governmental assistance. Certainly, anything unpopular with the
electorate will be hard to insist upon.

A r can e : I n flu e nce

10 You know who to ask

20 You are owed a couple of favours
30 A few pawns in key places
40 You can easily influence non-priority agendas in your
government
50 Your pawns reach into every government
60 Government leaders consult you for ‘advice’
70 They rarely try and say no
80 Mr President, we want you to start a war
90 We need all your children, see they are sent over
100 They just do what they are told, and ask no questions

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 Secrecy
This Attribute represents the inner circle and secret agenda within the
organisation. Some organisations do not advertise their presence. But
even for a corporation a few secrets need to be kept. You need not be
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
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totally secret; the best place to hide is often in plain sight. For instance,
we all know where the offices for MI6 and the CIA are, but how much do
we know about what goes on there? Large well-known corporations can
still have high secrecy Attributes.

Even so, secrecy can also be used to hide the existence of your
organisation completely, or hide it behind a shell company or a front.
Your employees themselves might know little of the true goals and
motives of such an organisation. They might think they are working on
one thing when actually their work is being used for something else.

A r can e : S ecre cy

10 Your secrets are a matter of public record

20 You can keep your records mostly private
30 You don’t advertise
40 Most people have heard of you, and your goals
50 Your agenda is known, but your methods are secret
60 Few people know your inner workings
70 Some people have heard of you, but don’t know what you do.
80 Only a few people know anything about you
90 Only deep research will reveal you exist
100 No one knows who you are or what you do

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 Knowledge
Knowledge is power, and there is a whole world of it out there. All
these secret organisations - of which you are only one - create a whole
new landscape. This Attribute details how much your corporation

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has discovered about the secret history of the world. Not just other
organisations, though. What really happened at Roswell? Who shot
Kennedy? Was Diana’s death an accident? Using this Attribute, you know
what is really going on behind the curtain.

This Attribute also shows how much esoteric knowledge you have. If the
Gamemaster decides there are aliens and magic in the world, this is how
much you know about them. It might grant access to and understanding
of actual spells or advanced technology. The actual effects of such
knowledge are up to the Gamemaster. But it is powerful and dangerous,
and plenty will be looking to steal it from you if they find out what you
know.

A r can e : K n owle d g e

10 You only know what you’ve been told

20 You’ve heard a few juicy rumours
30 You know some of what you know is true
40 You can separate truth from fiction
50 You know the major players
60 You know who is in the game, and their moves
70 You understand the big picture
80 You know who is doing what to whom
90 You understand the bigger picture
100 You know who is behind everything

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 T he O pi n i o n G r o up
Prestige
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
CHAPTER THREE

There are many other organisations in the world. The people behind
them take a lot more impressing than the great unwashed masses of
humanity. This Attribute represents how your peers view you. However,
not all of what they believe need be true. You can spread disinformation
among them as much as the general population. It’s just harder. But
beware; you may need to back up your fearsome reputation one day.
Some companies like to keep this Attribute low. While having a more
frightening bark can make you less of a target, it often makes you appear
to be a more dangerous rival. A company which actively plays down its
abilities will have a few more surprises when its enemies come after it
and, in all likelihood, underestimate it.

O p i n i o n : P r estige

10 Who?
20 Not important
30 Worth watching
40 Has achieved a couple of minor things
50 Minor success story
60 Experienced, a player
70 You mostly achieve your objectives
80 You are a force to be reckoned with
90 You are a major player
100 Few potent entities dare take you on

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 Façade
Even when you are dumping poison into the rivers and depleting the
ozone layer, PR can do wonders. Façade shows how well you make the
public love you. This doesn’t mean you can do anything with impunity;

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people will find out. However, they are less inclined to believe bad
publicity as you have proved you are doing so much good in the world. It
might all be a lie but the people believe it and that is what matters.

Unfortunately, a high Attribute in Façade can be a weakness. It proves

your public face is important and it is easy for others to create false
accusations that will damage it. Having said that, with a decent Façade
you won’t need to hide anything as no one will believe even your darkest
secrets.

O p i n i o n : F acad e

10 Who are you again?

20 Sounds pretty dodgy to me
30 Well, I avoid the cheaper brands
40 No worse than the rest
50 They did that ‘computers for schools’ thing
60 A good part of their profit goes to charity
70 They are eco-friendly and fair trade
80 They are better than the rest
90 They are more than just a company
100 They can’t be responsible, Greenpeace must be wrong

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 Pressures
To create a thing is to control a thing. This attribute represents the
monopoly a company has over the products or services it supplies. While
a company might produce several different products, it usually only
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CHAPTER THREE

really excels at one thing if it is to become a market leader. The Board of

Directors should choose what this product is when assigning points and
this product becomes the ‘Prime Pressure’ for the company.

The Pressures Attribute also grants control over several associated

‘Secondary Pressures’. These are left to the judgement of the
Gamemaster if the players suggest their Prime Pressure might hold
influence. For any attempt to control a Secondary Pressure, the Attribute
is halved but otherwise used in the same way.

Some examples of Secondary Pressures related to Prime Pressure are:

Tobacco Matches, lighters, rolling paper, legal marijuana

Publishing Games publishing, art criticism, printing, painting
Music CDs, downloads, MTV, classic vinyl
Guns Military vehicles, missiles, mercenaries
Computers Software, peripherals, games, mouse mats
Media Radio, video, merchandise, newspapers.

O p i n i o n : P r e ssures

10 What do you do again?

20 I’ve heard of that
30 Some people are familiar with your brand
40 Most marketplaces will stock your product
50 You are a known brand name
60 You can sell to any price range
70 You are the choice for most businesses
80 Your prices set the industry standards
90 You are the manufacturer of choice for almost everyone
100 What Microsoft is to Windows

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 T he E mployees G ro up
Loyalty

ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
CHAPTER THREE
You have a workforce, and you need their loyalty. There are plenty of
other head-hunters waiting to take your best and brightest. Especially
when even the lowest may know secrets you don’t want in anyone else’s
hands. The Loyalty Attribute applies to your mission teams; do you want
to risk them giving up half way through a mission because they want
overtime?

Loyalty is often rolled to see the reaction of the employees when the
company does something they won’t like (drops pay, bombs a village,
takes down a government, etc...). It also shows how much extra the
employees might be prepared to do for the company. This is important as
teams on a mission might decide to give up when things get tough.

E mplo y e e s : L o yalt y

10 They work only for the money

20 They do good work for the money
30 They believe in you, but still want the money
40 Treat them right and they’ll work well
50 You will never have strike problems
60 They put in overtime and don’t expect to be paid for it
70 They will work beyond their job description
80 They will do whatever you ask
90 They would die for the cause
100 They would kill their children for the cause

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 Specialists
This Attribute works a little differently from the others. While its general
level is important, it converts to team points you use to build the mission
teams you have working for you.
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You have 1 team point for every point you have in the Specialists
Attribute. If you have none, you can still field a team of general
employees. Good luck with that.

We’ll detail how you spend these points later on. But they can be spent
to create additional teams, and/or improve the skills and abilities of these
teams. Teams you use can improve their skills, and if they are lost on a
mission you can hire more, but their experience is lost. When missions
occur, each team has one member for each player character. Each player
might choose the same character, or swap around who they play for each
mission.

E mplo y e e s : S p ecial ists

10 You have one group, good for one type of mission

20 You have a couple of low-grade teams
30 You can usually find the right team for the job
40 You have a good team ready for most types of mission
50 You have several good teams
60 You always have the right team ready
70 You have multiple teams for a variety of tasks
80 You have several well-trained groups and a few Elite ones
90 Most of your specialists are the best in their field
100 You have loads of Elite trained people ready for a variety
of missions

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 U sing A ttrib utes
When a Cabal tries to exert its power, there are several ways this can be

ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
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resolved. The simplest is a basic roll. This is used when an organisation
wants to do something that is well within its ability but does involve a little
exertion on their part.

For this sort of test, the Gamemaster determines which Attribute is

appropriate and one of the players then rolls a D100 (2 ten-sided dice;
one for tens, one for units) and if the result is under the level of the
Attribute they have succeeded in what they wanted to do. This might
be anything from using Resources to acquiring equipment, Influence to
get a government contract, or Secrecy to ensure a journalist stays quiet.
This might be modified by the Gamemaster depending on how easy or
difficult the task might be. But no matter what, a roll of 1(01) is always a
success and a roll of 100 (00) is always a failure. Everyone has good and
bad days, after all.

Even though we are rolling dice, the players should still provide the
Gamemaster with some sort of description of what their Cabal is doing.
If they are looking to silence a journalist, are they pressuring her editor
or sending an assassin? Maybe they will create a story to destroy her
reputation or make threats to keep her quiet. Maybe they’ll even offer
her a job working for them! While this detail won’t net the players any
bonus, it is vital to building an atmosphere and telling the story of the
Cabal’s rise to power.

This is also a good opportunity for the players to roleplay as the Board
of Directors. As such, they can discuss the actions of their Cabal as a
meeting, either in a board room or the back room of an expensive club.
This way, each player can offer suggestions until they have reached a
consensus they can present to the Gamemaster.

Difficulty
If the organisation is trying to do something easy or especially difficult,
the Gamemaster might apply a modifier to the roll. This modifier is
applied to the Attribute in question before the dice are rolled. A selection
of general modifiers is provided on the table below.
While failure is still failure, if the result is under the original level of the
Attribute, it might not be all bad. The Gamemaster should grant the
players some sort of positive result from their operation.

Multiple Attributes
Sometimes, the Gamemaster will decide that the task in question will
require the use of more than one Attribute. If so, the players will need to
make a successful roll for each required Attribute, each using the same
difficulty modifier.

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 D i f f icul ty
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CHAPTER THREE

Almost Impossible -50

Getting hold of experimental tech; insisting
the president starts a war; reading the
Necronomicon without going mad

Very Difficult -30

Predicting the stock market; getting the
best contract; expanding an office into a
state of the art lab

Difficult -10
Getting on the cover of Time magazine;
getting hold of black market items; covering
up minor illegal activity

Average 0
Keeping your actions out of the papers;
headhunting new employees; getting a good
deal on supplies

Easy +10
Keeping the employees loyal by organising a
picnic; organising a small press conference;
researching public information about
competitors

If the modifiers make the task too difficult, or even impossible, the
players can decide to create a mission to make it easier. They create a
mission for one of their Teams and detail to the Gamemaster how they
think the success of this mission will help their plot. The Gamemaster
then grants them a bonus that they can apply if the mission is a success. If
the mission fails, there is no further penalty (unless they really screw up).
But the players can construct new missions to make further attempts to
improve their chances. They need not make any Attribute tests until they
have carried out as many missions as they like, holding their plots until
their agents have done what needs to be done.

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 To avoid the game simply becoming a series of dice rolls, the
Gamemaster should insist that at least one mission will be required for
the success of any major plot. Any use of Attributes that is hard enough
to provoke at least some sort of negative penalty might be considered

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‘major’.

Corporate Conflict
Organisations don’t have hit points, but they can still be wounded. Taking
on another Cabal is a dangerous and bloody business, but it can also be a
profitable one.

Attacks are made using only one Attribute, and both organisations use
the same Attribute to attack and defend (although the Gamemaster may
allow the players to use a different Attribute to make an attack at their
discretion). Modifiers might apply, as with simple tests, as can bonuses
for any successful missions. Given the stakes, it is sensible to do a little
ground work at least before making your move.

There is one modifier the attacker suffers that the defender does not.
They decide how much damage they wish to do to their opponent’s
Cabal and apply that as a direct modifier. So, if they want to reduce
their opponent’s Façade by 20 points, they suffer a -20 modifier to their
Attribute.

When the players are ready to make their attack, they make an attempt
to roll under their modified Attribute. The opposing Cabal also does
the same, trying to roll under their own modified Attribute. If one side
succeeds and the other fails, the successful side is the winner. This might
mean the attack is a success or it is successfully defended against.

If the attack is unsuccessful, the defender gains a point in the Attribute

that was attacked, and the attacker loses 5 points. The defender is also
made aware of who just took them on and might choose to mount an
attack of their own later on.

If the attack is successful, the defender loses as many Attribute points

as the attacker initially specified. The attacker can choose to add half this
amount to their appropriate Attribute, or only a quarter of it. If they only
add a quarter, their enemy remains unaware of who just attacked them,
but if the attacker opts to take half, the defender is aware of exactly who
just hurt them.

If both rolls are failures, everyone loses. There is no damage to either

side and no one knows who did what to whom.

If both rolls are a success, the highest roll is the winner. Damage is
applied as before, but only to a maximum of how far under their
Attribute the result of the attacker’s roll was.

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 Example: The Eternal Dawn (Knowledge 60) and League of Night (Knowledge
70) are fighting over ancient lore. The Eternal Dawn, after sending in teams to
investigate its layout and contents, are making a raid on the League of Night’s
library. The Eternal Dawn is the attacker and decides to try and do 20 damage
ATTRIBUTES IN DEPTH
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to the League of Night. So, the Eternal Dawn’s Knowledge Attribute is reduced
to 40. The Gamemaster decides there are no other modifiers.

The Eternal Dawn rolls 30 and the League of Night rolls 10. This means the
Eternal Dawn has won, but can only do 10 points of damage as they rolled
only ten fewer than their modified Attribute. The Eternal Dawn could gain
5 points, but they decide to play it safe and only gain 3 points (a quarter
of 10 rounded off). The League of Night suffers a loss of 10 points to their
Knowledge, but has no idea who just stole from them. They immediately send
out agents on a mission to investigate.

If the League of Night had failed their roll, they would have suffered a 20 point
loss to their Knowledge and the Eternal Dawn could choose between gaining
10 or 5 points.

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 A ttri butes in C onf lic t
So, what can you actually do with each Attribute? What does it really

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CHAPTER THREE
mean when you attack someone with Foundation? It’s time to bring
the abstract into the light of reality a little, by detailing what form these
Attributes conflicts actually take.

However, you should use this detail as a guide rather than a description.
The Board of Directors should take time to detail how they are making
an attack or defending themselves. The best way to do this is for one
of the Board to present the description to the others as if they are
making a proposal. The rest of the Board can then discuss and adapt the
description before it is put into play.

Logistics
Finances
Financial conflict is done on the stock market. It is a numbers game, but
those numbers are often based in reality. If a coffee crop fails, coffee
becomes more valuable. The numbers representing coffee stock are also
the lives of the farmers who may be going hungry. So, financial conflict
really involves taking advantage of the ebb and flow of human fortune.

Resources
As Resources represents the amount of ‘stuff’ you have, such conflict
often involves blowing things up. If you destroy a rival’s warehouse, their
Resources will drop. However, it can be also be resolved by disrupting
or redirecting supply lines, so the right equipment is stolen instead of
replaced.

Foundation
While it is difficult to attack using Foundation, it can easily be destroyed.
Once you know where your rival has property, you can foreclose on it,
buy it, or even see it comes to some harm (arson is so commonplace
nowadays…). Attacking with Foundation involves staking a claim in the
areas of your rivals. With a forward base, your teams can strike out with
far greater ease.

Arcane
Influence
Every organisation has its pawns, and Influence conflict is all about
your agents. These are the people you have working ‘backstage’ in
government and the establishment. In some cases, you might destroy the
reputation of your rival’s agents so they lose the leverage they have. But
you can also lean on them to make them change sides, either through
fear or offering them a better deal.

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 Secrecy
Secrecy conflicts are essentially a big game of hide and seek. You
attack by shedding light on your opponent’s operations. You defend by
misdirecting the public and covering up stories before they hit the media.
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CHAPTER THREE

Quite often, the conflict itself will reveal more than either organisation
would like.

Knowledge
Knowledge is hard to attack with, but easy to destroy. Each organisation
will be far too complicated for anyone to remember everything, and
so notes and records are essential. Such records, whether financial or
arcane, will have to be kept somewhere, and books burn far too easily.

Opinion
Prestige
Prestige conflict is a game of bluff. By sabre rattling, you are challenging a
rival to call your bluff. If they fail to do so, you prove your own standing
and reduce theirs for their cowardice. However, if you can’t back up your
call, you might become a laughing stock.

Façade
This battle is fought in the court of public opinion. In the case of
corporations, it is a naked attempt to steal customers. You must publicly
prove how great your organisation is, while showing how a rival has
failed its customers. As usual, the media can be a great help. But special
discounts and the correct labels can also be very powerful. If you loudly
tell your customers that your products don’t contain any Arsenic, they
will begin to wonder if your competitor’s products do…

Pressures
A fight using Pressures is a price war in many ways. You use your control
over a particular marketplace to set prices and drive out competition.
You can often do this to associated marketplaces, depending on how
reliant they are on your product range. So, your control over tobacco will
help you control those who rely on the cigarette trade. But it might also
affect those who grow other products in the same area (let’s say coffee)
if you manipulate the resources to see it grown (such as taking all the
shipping options or fertiliser for your crops and leaving none for other
farmers in the area).

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 Employees
Loyalty
Attacking the loyalty of a competitor’s employees is often a very low
blow. It might be done with lies, such as introducing false reports of

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management abuse (or revealing ones that are true). You might also
make better offers to key staff. Even if they are not taken up, the rival
employees will become disgruntled their own organisation doesn’t offer
the same.

Defending against such attacks involves basically being nice to your

workforce and offering fair compensation for their work. Remember that
Loyalty does not only apply to specialist teams, but also to the rank and
file ‘invisible’ members of your organisation. A disloyal staff will often
forget important messages, work slowly and become lax with security
protocols.

Specialists
This Attribute is the only one that doesn’t often get used as a direct
attack. However, you can just as easily argue that the whole specialist
team rules of the game are actually just a way to manage Specialist
conflict. But if you do make attacks using the Attribute itself, they
represent the same sort of conflict as Resources, only this time the
resources are human. If the Attribute drops, the organisation has fewer
points for specialist teams and some may have to be reduced or removed.

If an organisation has its Specialists Attribute reduced, it has two options.

The first is to reclaim the points by removing one of their teams. If the
team that gets ‘fired’ happens to be worth more than the points lost,
then the remaining points can be reassigned. As usual, the experience of
a team is not taken into account, only its base cost.

If you are unwilling or unable to let any of your teams go, you have to
take the hit in Finances instead. The Finances Attribute is reduced by
however many points are still outstanding (you might fire a team and still
need to reduce the Attribute). Points lost by Finances no longer need
to be removed from specialists. Basically, you are selling a few shares or
liquidating assets to get the funds to keep the team in play.

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 36
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 S k ill s

SKILLS
CHAPTER FOUR
Attributes are fine for dealing with corporate war but, when things get
more personal, you need to use specialist teams to get the job done.
Before we look at employees themselves, we should take a look at how
the rules system works for dealing with them. This comes down almost
entirely to the employee’s skills.

Each employee will have a few skills, which can be recorded on their
character sheet (see later). They need not specify they can read or write,
or tie their shoelaces. Anything trivial or mundane about their occupation
is a skill they automatically know how to do. So instead, the skills listed
here are for dealing with critical situations or complicated tasks requiring
very special training or experience.

All skills are rated from 0 to 5. At each level, they have an assigned target
number from 1 to 9.

M aking a S kill C h eck

When you try to use a skill, you roll 1D10 and must score less than or
equal to the target number for your skill level to succeed. A roll of ‘0’ is
always a failure. A ‘1’ is always a success.
In a contest, the one who gets the greatest difference between the target
number and their roll is the winner.

Example: Bob is trying to creep around an enemy complex. To get past a

guard he needs to succeed at a ‘Stealth skill roll’. He is Trained (level 2) so his
target number is 4. He rolls 1D10 and if he rolls 4 or less he has succeeded.

As it happens Bob is not alone. He rolls a 1, but a nearby guard makes an

opposed roll to try and see him using Alertness. He has a skill Attribute of 4,
needing to roll 8 or under to succeed. He rolls 7, a success, so we compare his
result to Bob. As Bob managed to roll 3 points under his target number and
the guard only rolled 1 under his, Bob has snuck by unseen.

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 D ifficu l t y R at i n g s
The tasks your employees will attempt will not always be the same
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CHAPTER FOUR

difficulty. Dealing with a grazed knee is easier than brain surgery, even
for a skilled medic. So the Gamemaster can assign a modifier to the roll if
they think the task is easier or harder than average. They may modify the
target number by up to two (from +2 to -2). So if the task is of average
difficulty the modifier is 0. If it is a little easier or harder than usual, add
or subtract 1; if it is significantly easier or harder, add or subtract 2.
Sometimes this modifier will make a roll automatically successful or
actually impossible. However, the rule of ‘1 always succeeds and 0 always
fails’ still applies.

Example: Bob is trying to climb up the side of a building after passing the
guard. His Climbing skill is 3, giving him a target number of 6. However,
the Gamemaster decides the wall has very few handholds and increases the
difficulty by 1, making the target number 5 instead.

S k i l l C h ecks
Skill Attribute Target
0 Untrained 1
1 Novice 2
2 Trained 4
3 Experienced 6
4 Seasoned 8
5 Elite 9

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 R oot S kills
All skills lead

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CHAPTER FOUR
back to a
‘root skill’
which covers
everything in the
same category.
The root skill
covers the general
knowledge you pick
up about that area,
the basic training if
you like. The first point
you spend on a skill also
gives you the root skill.
This effectively gives you a
level of 1 (Novice) in every
skill listed under it. You need
not note this down. But when
you come to improve one of
these skills, you should remember
they only need to be improved
from level 1 not 0. While skills can be
improved, root skills cannot; they only exist at
level 1.

Example: Bob has Stealth 4. The root skill for Stealth

is Security. If he wants to pick a lock, he can do so
at level 1, because Lock Picking is also a skill under
Security. If he wants to improve his Lock Picking up to
level 2, it would cost the same as if he already had it at
level 1.
His character sheet would then read:

Security Stealth (4), Lock Picking (2)

You might choose to put a (1) after Security but, as all root skills are rated at
1 and cannot improve, it isn’t necessary.

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 S kills L i s t i n g
The following list gives you a broad range of skills. They are designed to
SKILLS
CHAPTER FOUR

be quite wide and inclusive for the sake of simplicity. Combat and Science
skills are separated out for convenience but are no different to the
others.

The list of skills we offer is by no means exhaustive. If you want a skill

not listed (basket weaving, for instance) your Gamemaster may allow
you to add it to the list. It will be their decision as to whether it should
be allowed as a new skill and which root skill covers it. However, in some
cases a player might invent new root skills.

Computer
Skills: Internet Research, Hacking, Hardware, Software
Computer skills allow you to hack into other systems, search the internet
quickly and effectively, write code and operate computer programmes.

Disguise
Skills: Camouflage, Impersonation
Disguise skills allow you to change your appearance. You might use
patterns and colours to hide or appear to be someone you are not.

Drive
Skills: Cars, HGV, Passenger, Motorbikes
Drive skills cover land vehicles and their operation.

Finance
Skills: Business, Investment, Stocks & Shares
Finance skills detail city trading and grant an understanding of economics
and accounts procedures.

Influence
Skills: Charm, Etiquette, Persuasion
Influence deals with interpersonal skills, convincing others of your
point of view, not making a fool of yourself socially, making friends and
ingratiating yourself with the right people.

Languages
Languages are a little different in that they have no root skill. Each is
taken separately as a different language (French, German, Russian,
etc). Generally, knowing one language doesn’t help you understand any
others, but the Gamemaster may allow a (modified) roll to communicate
in languages of a similar group (such as French/Spanish or Japanese/
Chinese) to ones that are known.

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 Law
Skills: Criminal, Contract, Equity & Trusts, Land, Tort
Law covers the various areas of legal lore. There are many sub-divisions
and differences for each country and legal area. For simplicity’s sake,

SKILLS
CHAPTER FOUR
these should be dealt with by modifying the difficulty of any roll, although
the Gamemaster might create more complicated sub-skills if law is a focus
for their game.

Occult
Skills: Battle Magic, Curses, Divination, Elemental Magic, Necromancy,
Summoning, Wards
You must have the Gamemaster’s permission to take this skill, and the
collection of skills it governs may be adapted depending on the setting.
In general, the Occult skill covers both real magic and the mess of
speculation that might surround it. How magic functions (if at all) is up
to the Gamemaster. But an understanding of magical lore can often be
useful in a mundane game (such as an X-files style setting).

Perception
Skills: Alertness, Search
Perception governs finding and searching. Alertness is the passive skill
used to notice things. Search is the active skill used when looking for
something specific.

Physicality
Skills: Breaking, Climbing, Lifting, Running
Physicality details actions that use raw strength, speed or dexterity
developed from intense training.

Pilot
Skills: Autogyro, Helicopter, Jet Plane, Prop Plane
Pilot covers flying any form of aircraft.

Procedure
Skills: Corporate, Military, Police
Procedure grants familiarity with the organisation of a certain group’s
protocols; how a crime scene is run, when accounts are due, who is in
charge of what.

Security
Skills: Alarm Systems, Lock Picking, Picking Pockets, Stealth
Security covers sneaking about and getting into places you shouldn’t.

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 Streetwise
Skills: Drugs, Organised Crime, Prostitution
Streetwise details criminal operations and how to locate and run illegal
deals and contraband.
SKILLS
CHAPTER FOUR

Supernatural
Skills: Ancient Cultures, Angels, Demons, Fairies, Ghosts, Vampire, Werewolves
In a magical setting, there will be monsters. This skill details particular
types and their habits and weaknesses. In a mundane game, this becomes
interesting folklore; in a magical game it might be life saving.

Survival
Skills: Arctic, Desert, Tropical, Woodland
Survival is the art of staying alive with only few resources. The skills in
this area are grouped according to environment.

C ombat S ki lls
Hand to Hand
Skills: Aikido, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Wrestling
Hand to hand covers all the various forms of unarmed martial arts.
Most skills serve the same purpose, but a Gamemaster who knows the
differences might insist on the use of different skills for certain combat
actions (karate for punching but judo for wrestling, etc).

Close Combat
Skills: Club, Knife, Nunchaku, Staff, Sword
Close weapons are used in close range man-to-man combat.

Ranged Weapons
Skills: Crossbow, Longbow, Sling, Thrown Weapons
Ranged weapons cover any non-firearm not used for close combat.

Small Arms
Skills: Pistols, Rifles, Automatic Weapons, Shotguns
Small arms covers any form of personal firearm, from pistols to assault
rifles.

Heavy Weapons
Skills: Bazooka, Flame-thrower, Mini-gun, Rocket Launcher
Heavy Weapons are personal weapons with battlefield applications that
use little subtlety. They often cause a lot of collateral damage.

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 S c ience S kills
Biology

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CHAPTER FOUR
Skills: Biochemistry, Botany, Ecology, Genetics, Marine, Micro, Zoology
Biology covers the study of living things, from animals to plants to
microbes.

Chemistry
Skills: Explosives, Forensics, Molecular, Toxicology
Chemistry involves the way different substances react and combine.

Physics
Skills: Chaos Theory, Mechanics, Metallurgy, Quantum Theory
Physics details how things work and function, and the maths that guides
that movement.

Humanities
Skills: Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Psychology
Humanities looks at the social and artistic sciences.

Medicine
Skills: Anatomy, Disease, First Aid, Surgery
Medicine covers healing and diagnosing disease, as well as treating injuries
and long term care.

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 44
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 E mpl o y e e s

EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER FIVE
To get the job done, you need people to do it. Any time your company
needs something done, they will have to send out a team. A team is a
group of your employees, one for each player, who set out to do what
needs to be done. Adventures might involve players taking the part of
several teams over the course of the adventure. Few teams are so skilled
they can do everything. So you might play a military team to raid another
company, then a media team to cover up the event and later a scientist
team to investigate what was recovered. It’s up to the players to figure
out who they will send, to do what they need, to get what they want.

Teams are not disposed of after use; they remain as employees of the
company unless something happens. They might get killed, but could also
get fired or leave if something isn’t working. In that case their original
points are recycled and reassigned for a new team. However, if they are
used on multiple missions, they will gain experience and improve their
abilities. These points will be lost if they leave the company.

As each team has a member for each player, each player may well pick a
favourite. There is nothing to stop you returning to the same character
if that team is required. But there is also no reason not to swap around
who plays what in each team. It all depends on what your group prefers
to do. If you change the number of players, simply add or remove
members from the team. They are all built from the same points, so this
is easily done.

Your Specialists Attribute gives you points to spend on your special

mission teams. These must be defined before play. But you may also
choose to send teams of untrained personnel. These people can be
trained and gain experience, but will be painfully under-skilled for most
tasks initially. We’ll deal with basic statistics for these employees and how
they work first. Then we’ll detail the bonuses more experienced staff
receive and how to build mission teams.

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 G ener al E mplo y e e S tat i s ti cs
Teams are made up of employees. As we’ve mentioned before, there is
EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER FIVE

always one team member for each player. Individual employees may not
survive some missions and many are quite expendable. It is possible to
run missions designed to end in their death for the company to gain the
advantage.

Remember, your company is the character, the employees are simply

assets. However, that doesn’t mean you should see them as expendable;
it depends on your company. But most Bond villains had a somewhat
laissez-faire attitude to those in their pay.

When teams are killed, or mostly killed, new employees may be hired.
If a team is either wiped out or loses more than 50% of its members, it
can be replaced or refreshed. If the team is replaced, the original point
value is reassigned in its entirely. You may pick the same team type as
before, or build something new (such as creating a team of scientists
instead of replacing a lost military unit).

If the team is refreshed, the lost members are simply replaced, built with
the same points as before, but without the benefit of any experience the
lost members had. Basically, the company advertises for replacements,
but can only afford to offer the same benefits as they did before.

Example: The ‘Magnum Force’ mercenary company has three members on

its Board of Directors, so any team it buys has three members too. One of
these teams is a group of mercenaries and we’ll call the members Tom, Dick
and Harry. The team is built with the basic team package and the occupation
package for Soldiers.

On a mission, Harry and Dick are both killed. The Board can choose to
recycle the team budget and reclaim the points it cost to rebuild or create a
new team as 50% of them are lost. Otherwise they can recruit new staff at
no cost to replace the ones who were ‘terminated’. Let’s say they do employ
two new members: Alice and Jane. Alice and Jane will be created just as Tom,
Dick and Harry were originally. But as the survivor, Tom will have gained
experience and be a little more skilled. Alice and Jane will have to earn their
experience and don’t get any bonus just because Tom is more advanced.

Before we get onto creating teams, let’s take a look at the traits and
statistics of an individual employee:

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 Name
What his / her name is. As time goes on, you may want to flesh out the
character background. Have some idea of what the character looks like.
Male or female, ethnic background, dress style, etc.

EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER FIVE
Occupation
Just for the sake of a label, note the occupation of the character.
Each team will usually have the same career, but may follow different
disciplines. A team of scientists may contain biologists and zoologists; a
military team may have scouts, heavy weapons specialists, engineers, etc.

The other important thing about having an occupation is that we

assume you can perform an array of trivial skills associated with it. A
soldier knows how to keep a gun clean, a scientist knows how to use a
microscope, and a cop knows how police procedure works. Using your
employees’ occupation you can often argue to the Gamemaster that you
have useful skills and abilities in certain situations that are not covered on
their sheet.

Skills
Each employee will have a small range of skills that allow them to perform
actions. The number of points they have to buy skills, and what skills they
are allowed, is determined by the choices made for the team as a whole.

Wound Status
There are four wound statuses for employees. How you get them will be
explained in the combat section later on. Here is a list of them, and what
effect having each one has on your character.

Wounds can be ‘stacked’. After all, if you get wounded while wounded
- you’ve been hurt more. If you receive a ‘dead’ wound status, then you
are simply dead - regardless of how injured you were before. It can’t be
worse!

The same applies to an incapacitated wound, except when you are

already incapacitated. In that case, you roll 1D10: on a 1-5 you are still
incapacitated, on 6-10 you are ‘Dead’. If you are wounded, you can be
‘wounded’ twice or even more times. For each wound you take, you
add a cumulative modifier of 1 to all dice rolls. If the modifiers eventually
mean you have no chance to succeed at any skill, you are automatically
incapacitated.

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 W o u n d S tatus
EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER FIVE

Status Effect
Healthy As you were
Wounded Increase the difficulty of any
task by 1 for each wound
the employee has
Incapacitated You cannot move and can
barely talk. You are alive but
no action is possible
Dead Bye

Example: Bob isn’t hidden for long and another guard spots him and shoots
him in the leg. He takes a wound. To make a skill check he now rolls 1D10 +1
and must still get equal to or under the target number. Another 2 shots and he
is looking a lot worse. With 3 wounds he now rolls 1D10 +3 for all his actions.
Another shot gives him a fourth wound which would make him roll 1D10 +4.

However, let’s say Stealth is his highest skill. It is now impossible for him to roll
less than a result of 5, meaning he cannot succeed at his best skill. Instead of
taking a fourth wound, he is automatically incapacitated.

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 Equipment
For this you will have to beg the Gamemaster for what you want. It will
depend on the Attribute your Board of Directors assigned to Resources.
Elite units are not so good without guns. So assign carefully.

EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER FIVE
Untrained Employees
You may remember we said that if you don’t have the right team, you
can send some untrained employees on the mission. They are allowed
to pick two root skills each (but no speciality skills under them), which
they will have at level 1. At least one of these root skills must be the same
for all members of the team. Otherwise they get no skills. If they survive
they can improve and gain new skills as usual. However, this does at least
allow you to send scientists on a science mission, or soldiers on a combat
mission, even if they are not very good ones.
These teams might not cost anything, but they are not worth anything
when they are recycled either. You could potentially create a free team
and through luck and good judgement they gain many skills through
experience. But any members who get replaced will only have 2 root
skills as before, and if the team is shut down the organisation reclaims no
points. So an untrained team is useful in a pinch, but never a long term
solution.

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 50
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 C o n s t r uc t i n g S pec i alist T eam s

CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS

CHAPTER SIX
I’ve tried to keep this simple, as you may get through a lot of employees.
So don’t get too attached. On the plus side, though, if your company
loses a mission team, the points are simply recycled into new teams.
To create your specialist teams you must spend the points you get from
the Specialists Attribute. You get 1 team point for each point of Attribute.
So a Specialist level of 26 gives you 26 team points to spend.

You can spend the team points as you like on the following options, which
each have various point costs. Some options can be bought multiple times
for a single team. You might use them to create as many teams as you like
with little training, one highly trained specialist team or whatever you like
in between.

Once you have decided on the options for the team, the players then
create the individual team members using the skill points granted by
the options chosen for each team. When a character gains a skill, they
automatically gain the root skill that goes with it (which always remains at
1).

Basic Team (3 team points)

A group of specialists. You get 1 character for each member of the Board
of Directors (players). Each character has 2 skills at level 2; they can be
different for each member but must be related. You must pick this option
for each team you want to have.

General Skills (3 team points)

Each member of the team gets 4 skills at level 2 but each must be from
a separate root skill (which is included in the cost). This option can be
picked once for each team.

Interest Skills (4 team points)

Each team member gets 2 skills at level 3 for each member of the team.
They can be from the same or different root skills. Can be bought with an
occupation package, and bought multiple times.

Advanced Skills (6 team points)

Each team member gets 1 skill at level 4. Skills may be different, but must
be related.

Occupation Package (3 team points)

A cheap way to get more skills. Choose a package from the Occupation
Packages list (see later) and apply it to all of the team. While a team can
take two occupation packages, it cannot take a third.

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 Advanced Occupation Skills (6 team points)
You must already have an occupation package to take this. Each member
of the team can choose to have level 4 with one of their occupation
package skills. In addition, you may add a point to a different occupational
CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS
CHAPTER SIX

skill as well (this may raise a skill above 3).

Personal Equipment (2 team points)

The team comes with its own advanced personal equipment to use for
their occupation, independent of the organisation’s Resources Attribute.
While any soldier team has guns, this team has a variety, including heavy
weapons, satellite phones and maybe even a tank. Scientists will have
portable lab equipment, biohazard equipment and advanced computers.
It is all quality stuff, but only field items are available, no labs or stealth
aircraft. But if it is lost, it is replaced for the next mission.

Advanced Personal Equipment (10 team points)

The team has their own equipment as above, but they also each have
some especially advanced and good quality items. Each team member
may pick one root skill they have. When using that root skill, or any skill
under it, the team member may reduce the difficulty of any test using it
by 1 point. However, a natural roll of 10 is still a failure.

Specialist Vehicles (5 team points)

While most teams can get hold of a vehicle, this team has vehicles that
have advanced modifications. Each member of the team has such a
vehicle and each has a special modification that allows it to perform an
unusual function. This might be a tow line, extra speed, a drill, a bridge
building platform, anything you might imagine. Once the modification is
decided on, it remains that way forever. But the package can be bought
again for multiple modifications.

Cyberware (10 team points)

This package is only available with the Gamemaster’s permission, as they may
rule this technology is not available.

The team are all augmented with advanced cybernetics. Each may be
enhanced in different ways, with cybervision, robotic limbs or even
cerebral augmentationss. Each team member can pick one trait (rather
than skill) that has been augmented. Some suggestions are: Strength,
Coordination, Reflexes, Intelligence, Charm, Speed, Precision, etc.

Whenever the chosen trait could be applied to any skill use, the team
member in question may reduce their die result by 1 point (although a
natural 10 is always a failure). Players should take a moment to detail the
cyberware the team members have and how it augments their chosen
trait.

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 O cc upation P ackag e s
You can create more of these packages as your Gamemaster allows.

CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS

CHAPTER SIX
However, the best option is to suggest one and allow the Gamemaster
to assign the skills. Each package generally grants five skill points above
the basic root skills which are included. While this is more than usual, the
skills are assigned very specifically.

Some packages offer a choice of skills within a group, denoted by ‘Any’

followed by a number. The number is the number of skill levels the new
skill must be, although it must be chosen from those grouped under the
relevant root skill. As Languages do not have a root skill, they can have
a rating of 1, but otherwise most of these ‘Any’ skills will be skill level 2.
If the package offers Any (3) the character may have either one skill at
level 3 or divide the points to have 2 skills at level 2 from the appropriate
group.

Streetwise - Any (3) can look like this:

• Streetwise Drugs (3) or
• Streetwise Drugs (2) Organised Crime (2)

The package is applied to every member of the team in question. Where

there is a choice of skills, individual characters may choose different skills
within the same limits.

Archaeologist
This closeted group of academics might be graduates working for a
museum or a team of Indiana Jones-like adventurers.
• Computer Internet Research (2)
• Languages Any (1)
• Humanities Archaeology (3) Any (2)

Corporate Spy
This team is looking to get inside a rival company and learn all their
secrets, by snooping around the records or ingratiating themselves with
those in the know.
• Computer Any (2)
• Finance Any (3)
• Influence Persuasion (2)
• Procedure Corporate (2)

Investigator
This team looks into the details for you. They might be private eyes, a few
police detectives on your payroll or even a private firm of ex-FBI agents.
• Computer Internet research (2)
• Perception Any (3)
• Procedure Police (2)
• Streetwise Any (2)
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 Low Life
They may not be trustworthy but they’ll do what they are told if the
money is right. They might be a local street gang, criminal gangsters or
even just some homeless guys who get you information.
CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS
CHAPTER SIX

• Perception Alertness (2)

• Security Any (3)
• Streetwise Any (3)

Occultist
These teams of academics are well versed in the magical arts. They might
be crazy fanatics, powerful magicians, deluded conspiracy theorists or all
three.
• Humanities Any (2)
• Occult Any (3)
• Supernatural Any (3)

Scientist
There are as many scientists as there are sciences. This team is a research
group focusing on several different areas on your behalf.
• Computer Any (2)
• Pick 2 from Biology, Chemistry or Physics
• For both picks add Any (3)

Scout
This team knows how to live in the wilds. They might be army rangers,
hunters or simply poachers or frontiersmen.
• Disguise Camouflage (2)
• Survival Any (3)
• Close Combat Knife (2)
• Small Arms Rifle (2)

Soldier
There are plenty of places to get military training, and not all of them are
legitimate. This team has learned how to kill and many have served in a
number of different countries before coming to you.
• Physicality Any (3)
• Hand to Hand Any (3)
• Small Arms Any (3)

As it is possible to pick two occupation packages, you may end up getting

skill points to assign to areas you already have for the team. However,
no occupation package can raise a skill above level 3. The points must be
assigned to different skills or they are lost entirely.

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 Example Team Creation:
‘Caleb Pharmaceuticals’ has a Specialists Attribute of 26, granting it 26 points
to create teams. The company has an advanced research program, sending
scientists into the wilderness to search for new drug components.

CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS

CHAPTER SIX
The Board of Directors decides they want three teams: a Scientist team, a
Tracker/Scout team and a Military team. However, after some discussion they
realise they need the scientists to be able to make it through the jungle on
their own and keep the soldiers for emergencies.

So, they spend their first six points to buy 2 teams (A ‘Basic Team’ twice).
Each has the same number of characters as the Board of Directors and each
character gets 2 skills at level 2.

Next, they decide to buy occupation packages to kit each team out quickly.
They spend 6 more points to buy 2 Occupation packages for the first
team: Scientist and Scout. This team gets a name as the ‘Outlanders’. The
other team is given the Soldier package for another 3 points, becoming the
‘Countermeasures’ team.

That’s 15 points spent, so there are 11 left. The Board decides the Outlanders
have had enough spent on them and really like the idea of an elite military
team. So, they spend 6 points on Advanced Occupational skills for the
Countermeasures team, giving each of them a skill at level 4. They also buy
Personal Equipment for them for another 2 points. That leaves 3 points, which
the Board decide to hang onto and perhaps buy another basic team when they
know what the next mission is.

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 Example Employee Creation:
Each of the Board decides to create a character for each team. They look
at the Outlander team first as they are going to be their main group. The
Outlanders have the basic team package and two occupation packages:
CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS
CHAPTER SIX

Scientist and Scout. Sarah decides her character will be a biologist who has
spent time among the larger fauna of the Amazon.

For her Scientist picks she takes Biology – Zoology (3) and Chemistry –
Forensics (2) Molecular (2) (dividing her Chemistry 3 into 2 skills). From Scout
she can pick a survival skill and decides to take Tropical (3). She still has 2
picks from her original team package. A little fighting and running about may
be called for so she takes Small Arms – Pistol (2) and Physicality - Climbing (2)

Her character’s skills look like this:

• Computer Any (2)
• Disguise Camouflage (2)
• Survival Tropical (3)
• Close Combat Knife (2)
• Small Arms Pistol (2) Rifle (2)
• Biology Zoology (3)
• Chemistry Forensics (2) Molecular (2)

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 Next Sarah takes a look at the Countermeasures team for her character. She
decides on a sharpshooter with a knack for finding a good hiding place.
The Countermeasures team has an occupation package, the basic team
package and an advanced occupational package. So Sarah picks her

CONSTRUCTING SPECIALIST TEAMS

CHAPTER SIX
occupational skills first and goes for: Physicality -Climbing (2) and Running (2),
Hand to Hand - Karate (3) and Small Arms - Pistol (2) Automatic weapons (2).

To add a little sneakiness, for her two basic team skills she takes Perception –
Search (2) and Security – Stealth (2). But you may be wondering why a sniper
can’t use a rifle. Actually, Sarah’s been saving the advanced occupational
skill for that and finally takes Small Arms – Rifle (4) to finish. The advanced
package also lets her add 1 to another occupational skill and she picks
Automatic Weapons, making it 3.

This leaves her with:

• Perception Search (2)
• Physicality Climbing (2) Running (2)
• Security Stealth (2)
• Hand to Hand Karate (3)
• Small Arms Pistol (2) Rifle (4) Automatic Weapons (3)

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 58
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 C o mbat a n d C onf l ic t

COMBAT AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER SEVEN
Sooner or later your employees are going to get into a fight. So here are
some rules to help you hurt other people and possibly get yourself killed.
There are generally two forms of combat: ranged and close combat.
Ranged combat involves fighting at a distance, simply trying to hit a target
with a gun, bow or thrown weapon. Close combat involves getting in
close where the opponent is trying to tackle and fight you at the same
time. This might be unarmed or using swords, knives or broken bottles.

W ho G oes F irst ?
In any combat, you need to know who is going to get to swing first.
Those with ranged weapons ready, resolve their actions first. If several
people have ranged weapons, each should make an initiative roll. This is a
roll of 1D10, adding the character’s skill level. The highest roll goes first
and continues with the next highest, etc. Anyone can choose to save their
action until later in the round, firing when a better opportunity comes up.

R anged C ombat
To make an attack with a ranged weapon, you just make a skill check as
usual. This is based on the skill for the weapon you are using (surprisingly
enough!). The Gamemaster may decide a modifier is appropriate for the
difficulty of the shot (just as with any other roll). This might be because
the target is moving, in cover, or there is bad lighting, etc. The modifiers
run from -2 to +2 and are summarised below. The modifier is applied to
the result of the dice roll.

If the character manages to roll under the target number, as with any
other skill roll, they have hit their target. If not, they miss.

H and - to -H and & C lo s e C ombat

Those who are getting close to their target act after the ranged fighters.
All their actions happen at basically the same time. So work out who is
fighting who first. Then each combatant rolls their appropriate skill and
the one with the best result (most under the difficulty) is the one that
does damage to the other this round.

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 If more than two people are fighting, there are usually still two sides. If
more than one person is attacking a single opponent, all participants roll
their skill as usual. Work out who does damage by comparing the single
participant’s roll to each of his opponent’s rolls. This might mean he
COMBAT AND CONFLICT
CHAPTER SEVEN

takes damage twice. The single participant doesn’t need to divide his skill
between his opponents, but does add 1 to his dice roll for each opponent
he is engaged with. So if he is fighting two people, he adds 2 (but he does
not add 1 if engaged with one person).

Guns in close combat

If you have a ready firearm but are engaged in close combat, you become
a close combat fighter. You can still use the gun as a weapon as you tussle
with your opponent, but he’ll be trying to stop you pointing it at him. You
do exactly the same as you would for close combat, but use your gun skill
with a penalty of 2. If you win, you get to do damage as usual.

R a n g e d C ombat M odifiers
Bonus Because the shot is... Such as...
-2 Ridiculously easy Point blank
range, static
target

-1 Quite easy Close, no

cover, not
moving

+1 Tricky Good cover,

under
pressure

+2 Extreme Good cover,

under fire,
target moving

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 D oing D amage
Once you’ve hit someone, you get to see if you hurt him or her. Roll

COMBAT AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER SEVEN
1D10 and consult the table below:

These results are for ‘Lethal Damage’. While anything can kill, you are
less likely to do so with your hands. You can specify your attack is non-
lethal if the Gamemaster agrees it is possible. With non-lethal damage,
any damage result of crippled or dead renders the victim unconscious
and wounded instead. The Gamemaster will usually specify hand to hand
and clubbing weapons as non-lethal, whereas guns are lethal. Players may
want to do non-lethal damage if they are trying to capture not kill.

So what is the difference between weapons? Easy; each weapon has a

damage bonus. Add this number to the damage roll. If you wear armour,
subtract the ‘Armour Attribute’ from the damage roll. Note that some
armour has different values against different weapons.

D o i n g D ama g e
Roll Effect Result
1-2 Glancing Blow Act last next
round*
3-4 Hard Knock Lose next action
5-8 Wounded Add a ‘Wounded’
health level
9 Crippled Gain
‘Incapacitated’
health level
0 Destroyed Dead*

*Glancing Blow: you lose the initiative next action so act after anyone
who wasn’t hurt that round. If more than one person suffers such a
result, they all act at the end of the round, but in their own initiative
order.

*Dead: unless you can roll 8-10 on 1D10, in which case you are crippled.

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 S ta n da r d W eapons
COMBAT AND CONFLICT
CHAPTER SEVEN

Weapon Ammo Weapon Applicable

Bonus Skill
Dagger / Club None +1 Close
Combat
Sword None +2 Close
Weapon
Light Pistol 6 +2 Small Arms

Heavy Pistol 7 +3 Small Arms

Sub Machine 4 / 1* +4 / +8 Small Arms

Gun

Assault Rifle 8 / 1* +4 / +8 Small Arms

Shotgun 2 +4 Small Arms

Sports Rifle 4 +3 Small Arms

Mini-Gun 5 bursts +6 Heavy

Weapons
Rocket 1 +7 Heavy
Laucher Weapons

Grenade 1 +3 Thrown
Weapons

Here is a list of standard weapons. If you want to differentiate between

an M-16 and an AK-47, go ahead. But here they are both Assault Rifles.

*The second figure is for emptying a third of the gun’s clip in one shot
using auto-fire. You can change which mode the gun is in only once per
round. Using auto-fire adds a penalty of 1 to your roll, and requires it
to be reloaded after three shots. However, it does the second (larger)
damage figure.

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 A rmour
Leather jacket

COMBAT AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER SEVEN
Tough clothing that might turn a blade if you are lucky. Reduce the
damage of any edged weapons by 1.

Stab-proof vest
A vest designed to stop knives. Reduces all damage by 1 point, but edged
weapon damage by 3.

Bullet-proof vest
This vest is designed to stop bullets, unsurprisingly. It reduces all damage
by 1 point, but all damage from firearms by 6 points.

Combat armour
A mixture of knife protection and bullet proof armour. Reduces all
damage by 6 points.

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 E xampl e o f C ombat :
Two military team specialists (Jack & Jill) are fighting two corporate goons in a
warehouse. They have got separated. Jack is a Hand-to-Hand specialist, while
COMBAT AND CONFLICT
CHAPTER SEVEN

Jill is good with guns.

As there is lots of cover from various crates, the Gamemaster decides a search
roll is necessary from everyone, to see who finds who first. Jack & Jill both
have Perception (Search) 3. The goons don’t know Jack & Jill are there, so
they use Perception (Alertness), which for them is 2. Jack rolls 9, utterly failing
to see anything. Jill rolls 2, spotting one of the goons. The goons both do well,
rolling a 2 and a 4, both seeing one of our heroes each. With several people
having now drawn guns, we resolve the ranged combat first.

Jill and her goon each draw guns on each other. Jill is using an assault rifle; her
skill is Small Arms (Assault Rifle) 3. Both goons are using a heavy pistol, and
their skill is Small Arms (Pistol) 2. A quick initiative roll (of 1D10) is in order, Jill
adding 3 and the goons adding 2. Jill’s result is 8 and the goons get 5 and 6. Jill
goes first.

Jill levels her gun at a goon. The Gamemaster decides it’s an average shot
(clear sight, good lighting, medium range) and Jill rolls 6, just succeeding. For
damage, however, she only rolls 2. Her Assault rifle is not on auto-fire so she
adds 4 for a total of 6. Her goon is wounded. The goon now gets to fire back.
He rolls a 4, just enough to hit, but as he is wounded he must add 1 to his roll
for a total of 5. He misses. The other goon is given a -2 bonus to shoot at Jack,
who is still unaware of him, but he misses too, rolling 8.

The shots alert Jack and he makes a leap towards his attacker to engage him
in hand to hand combat. The Gamemaster rules this closing distance is Jack’s
action for the round and declares a new round.

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 On round 2, Jill and her goon are still in ranged combat, but as Jack has
engaged the other goon they are both in close combat. Jill and her goon roll
initiative and Jill wins. She switches to auto-fire, adding 1 to her dice roll, but
rolls 2, getting a hit with a result of 3. Her damage roll is only 4 but she adds 8

COMBAT AND CONFLICT

CHAPTER SEVEN
for a total of 12. The goon is killed before he can fire back.

Jack has engaged his goon in hand to hand, so this is resolved next. Jack is
using his hands, but the goon still has his gun and wrestles to use it on Jack.
Jack has a Hand to Hand (Karate) skill of 3. They both roll a 4, but as Jack
has the better skill, that means Jack does the damage. He rolls an 8, and the
goon is wounded.

With only one goon left, on the next round Jack and Jill both take him on
in hand to hand in an effort to capture him. With no ranged combat and
everyone involved in the same fight, we move straight to close combat. Jack,
Jill and the goon are all in the same fight and so roll against each other. The
goon has to add 2 to his roll for facing two opponents. He is also wounded for
a further point. Jack rolls 1, Jill rolls 4 and the goon rolls 1, which adds +3 for a
result of 4.

Jill’s Hand to Hand (Karate) skill is only 2 but her roll of 4 is a success. It’s
the same for the goon, even with his modifier. But as neither he nor Jill got
a better roll than their opponent, neither does damage. However, we also
compare Jack’s roll to the goon’s as he is also in the fight. Jack’s 1 is five
points better than his target number, clearly beating the goon and doing
damage. His damage roll is really lucky, getting a 10. This means death, but
as this is non-lethal combat (blunt hands) the goon is rendered decidedly
unconscious. Jack & Jill are victorious.

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 R u n n i n g t h e G am e

RUNNING THE GAME

CHAPTER EIGHT
Hopefully, by this point the game makes sense to you. More than that,
we hope it’s inspired a few ideas for your own organisations, teams and
missions. In this section, we take a look at what you can do with all these
points and employees.

Cabal is unlike most usual RPGs in many ways. You share a central
character, and decide with the rest of the players on your experience
points before undertaking an adventure. You have several secondary
characters, and yet also lose little when they are killed.

But how does your group start to put a game of Cabal together? The
place to begin is with the Cabal and what it needs. There is bound to be
one Attribute the players want higher than the others, perhaps even one
they really need higher. So they should tell the Gamemaster which one
this is, and how much they want to improve it. The Gamemaster will offer
the Cabal a mission to procure what it needs. If the team is successful in
the mission, the Board of Directors adds the relevant Attribute points.
Then they can figure out their next plan.

M ission D esign
In most games, you get points for your character at the end of an
adventure to improve skills and abilities. In Cabal, your mission defines
these points. It is up to the Board of Directors to decide what Attribute
they are looking to improve and by how much.

Each mission is rated on a scale of 1-5. This is both the number of

Attribute points the Cabal will add if they succeed, and the level of the
opposition standing in their way. What form these missions take is up to
the group, and we provide a few suggestions later on.

On completion of the mission, the appropriate Attribute is improved by

twice the level of the mission (1-5). All non-player characters (goons,
guards and other bad guys) the employees will meet are the same level as
the mission (see later).

However, the Gamemaster might instead choose to make NPCs of the

same level as the number of operations (see later) that have been done in
the mission. So they are level 1 on the first operation, level 2 on the next,
etc. This way the real opposition gets saved for last.

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 Missions may take several operations to complete. It may not be enough
to break in and steal the information; you might also have to plant it in
a rival firm and find a way to get the cops to come looking for it. Every
new step is another operation, one that might require a different set of
RUNNING THE GAME
CHAPTER EIGHT

skills or the use of a new team. The Gamemaster should plan for any
mission to potentially require as many operations as it has levels to fully
complete. However, these operations can be laid out by the Gamemaster
and the Board of Directors before anything actually happens.

The actual planning of the mission and preparation for it should be a

cooperative process between the players and the Gamemaster. They
can all take part in deciding on the mission and the different operations
it might require. The players might rely on the Gamemaster to tell them
what needs doing. But they might also list all the operations they want to
attempt to complete in the mission in great detail.

Ideally, it should be a combination of the two, with the Gamemaster

facilitating the imagination of the players in constructing the basic plan
for the mission. By doing this, the players are also writing the adventure
for the Gamemaster. They detail the facility they need to get into, where
they expect the secret lab to be hidden, the scientist they need to make
contact with, etc.

Once the mission’s final objectives and the operations that will achieve
it have been figured out, it is up to the Gamemaster to complicate
things. The players might have decided they are going to make a strike
on a rival’s compound, but what will be waiting for them there? Do the
rivals know they are coming? Is it even a trap? These are things only the
Gamemaster will know, even if the players have planned their operations
in detail.

As it might take a whole session for the group to plan their mission,
the Gamemaster should have until next time to come up with a few
complications. While the Gamemaster can create a whole new adventure,
all they really need to do is decide on a few spanners to throw into the
players’ carefully wrought plan. If the Gamemaster listens carefully to the
planning and gets involved with a few twists of their own, they may have
decided on enough complications as soon as the players have a plan!

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 Team Experience
Teams can also gain experience and improve. At the end of each mission
they go on (successful or not), they can put a check mark next to as
many different skills as the level of the mission. Each skill they check must

RUNNING THE GAME

CHAPTER EIGHT
be one they used on the mission and no skill can be checked twice for
the same mission. When a skill has as many check marks as its level, the
check marks are removed and the skill is improved by one level.

If a player wants a character to gain a skill they do not currently have,

they can spend a check mark to gain the root skill (at a level of 1 as
usual). After that, or if they already have the root skill in question, the
new skill is gained at level 2. Any new skills must be approved by the
Gamemaster and there must have been an opportunity on the mission
for the character to learn it.

Example: John is a ‘Low Life’. One of his many skills is Streetwise, which looks
like this:

Streetwise Drugs (2) Prostitution (3)

During a big mission, he spends time digging into the drugs trade for
information. The Gamemaster lets him have a check mark for Drugs. Even
though Prostitution is also under Streetwise, he gets no check as we are
dealing with specifics. After another mission, he puts a second check against
Drugs, and it improves to level 3.

But in the same mission he had a run in with Capone the Gangster. As he
survived and learnt from the experience, the Gamemaster allows him to spend
a check mark to gain Organised Crime as well. As he has Streetwise but not
Organised Crime, his Attribute in it is now 2.

If he later wanted to learn Pistol skill, he would have to spend a check mark to
gain the Small Arms root skill. Later, he could then spend another check mark
to gain Small Arms (Pistol) at 2.

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 Non-player Characters
In the course of performing missions, the employees are going to come
up against authorities and the minions of other corporations. These
characters are called non-player characters, or NPCs. Some will be fully
RUNNING THE GAME
CHAPTER EIGHT

realised characters, others mere goons and thugs.

To keep things simple, all NPCs have only one statistic, their level. This
level is their Attribute in effectively every skill. This doesn’t mean they
actually have an Attribute in every skill but, as they are only likely to
perform skills relevant to their occupation in facing the Cabal’s teams,
their Attribute in other skills is irrelevant.

Should such a skill outside their occupation become relevant, the NPC
can be considered to have it at a rating of half (rounded down) of their
level.

Example: An elite level 5 soldier NPC can be considered to have skill in Small
Arms (Rifle) of 5. But if he is called upon to use skill in Etiquette, his Attribute
will only be 2; that is, if the Gamemaster thinks he should even have the skill
at all. A level 1 Waitress will probably have Etiquette at her full level of 1, but
be untrained (0) in everything outside her job.

It is also important to note that not every NPC will really need any stats.
The hostages you take when things go wrong are unlikely to make any
skill rolls. Not every waitress and receptionist will need a full character
breakdown. What is important for these characters are a few personality
traits and characterisation notes, not their statistics.

While the Gamemaster can make NPCs of any level up to the level of the
mission itself, they can choose to make them lower as well. It is important
to balance the opposition. So, while they could make the teams face an
army of level 5 soldiers on a level 5 mission, if there are a lot of them
they should be of a lower level, maybe 3 or even 2. The Gamemaster
should make sure they get a good balance in the opposition so they are
not impossible to beat or a pushover. The teams should emerge bloody
but victorious, as long as they make sensible decisions and plan well.

Bonus Finance
As money makes money, the Gamemaster may choose to allow the
company finances to improve gradually automatically. At the end of
any successful mission, you can add 5% (round down) of your current
Finances Attribute to your Finances Attribute. So, if you have a Attribute
of 50, you get to add 2 points. The Gamemaster may insist that Finances
is reduced by a failed mission by the same 5%.

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 Losing Attributes
While Attributes might drop as a result of challenges, it is not the only
way they can fall. If a team fails a mission badly, the Gamemaster can
reduce an Attribute by the amount it was going to be improved by. In

RUNNING THE GAME

CHAPTER EIGHT
fact, the Gamemaster can reduce Attributes by any amount if the teams
really screw up. If your team ends up spilling all your secrets to the
news at six, your Gamemaster is being kind by only halving your Secrets
Attribute! This is all up to the Gamemaster at any time. So the players
should be prepared for the consequences of abject failure!

It is also possible that rival groups will make attacks on your organisation.
The Gamemaster can begin a session telling the Board of Directors that
they have lost certain Attributes due to enemy action. If they can organise
a mission to improve that Attribute against their rival, they get the stolen
points back as a bonus.

Façade Vs Secrets
You may think that having one of these high would preclude having
anything in the other. When you have high Attributes in both, it becomes
a case of ‘hiding in plain sight’. Imagine if McDonalds or Microsoft had
a secret inner council, with an entirely different agenda. (Who is to say
they haven’t?!?) The company may be just a money-making front for the
real organisation.

Rival Organisations
While the core of the game is building your own organisation, it is bound
to make enemies. The Gamemaster should create other organisations
that have opposing agendas to act as rivals for the players’ Cabal. The
Gamemaster should take the same points the players had and create rival
organisations with the same amount. If they don’t want to play fair, they
could create more powerful rivals, or even two or three.

In this case, when the players act against the rivals, the Attributes they
gain are deducted from the rivals. As such, the damage of their secret
war should become evident.

If you don’t want to create a slew of organisations to challenge the

players, there is a way to let them do all the hard work. When they
decide to take on a new organisation, let them tell them tell you all about
their enemy. Ask them if this is just a random group they have come
across or have they fought in the past? Maybe they know little about the
group, having simply found them in their way. You can get a lot of detail
from this sort of conversation, and it has the added bonus of letting the
players detail what they think would be cool.

When it comes to creating the attributes and details of the rivals, you can
again let the players do the work. When they first make a move against
the rival organisation, they will probably have to make a roll against one
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 of their Attributes. When they do, write down the result of their roll and
then make that the Attribute of the rival. So if they fail, it is because the
rival had such a good Attribute, and a success proves how weak the rival
might be.
RUNNING THE GAME
CHAPTER EIGHT

While this method might be random, it does let you get on with the game
and create a story reason the rival has the Attributes it does. As always,
the Gamemaster is free to tweak and amend any Attribute that doesn’t
make sense. But sometimes, making sense of odd random rolls can lead
to some interesting combinations and more complicated organisations.

Cabal War
You might like to play the game with each player having a Cabal all of
their own. Then the game becomes a movement of alliances as each
Cabal decides whether it is in their interests to aid or oppose each other.

Magic and Super-science

It is up to your group as to where to go with this game. It is generally
assumed you are playing in a contemporary modern setting. However, if
your group want magic to be real or for the Cabal to be a secret order in
control of advanced alien technology, then go crazy. Spells and advanced
weapons will always do damage in the same way as any other weapon,
simply using different skills.

The more strange effects are really up to the Gamemaster to moderate

depending on the skill level of the characters involved. Reduce the user’s
skill the more advanced or powerful the effect in question and insist on a
successful skill roll to make the effect occur. So, shooting a fireball might
not have a modifier, but mind control might reduce a skill by 3 levels.
Really, it’s up to the Gamemaster to decide where to take this but, as
long as it seems to work and you’re all having fun, you are doing it right.
Other than that, let your imagination go a little crazy.

A lot of magical skill will also be useful on a mundane level. Aside

from throwing spells, it grants the lore to know how to undo ancient
enchantments or to spot arcane traps. In a more Cthulhu style game, it
becomes a vital skill to undo wards with the right mixture of potion or
inscription, rather than a way to fireball a Mi-go.

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 History and the Future
With a little adaptation, Cabal need not be played in the modern era.
There have been companies and conspiracies for hundreds of years, and
there is no reason to think there won’t be plenty of them in the future.

RUNNING THE GAME

CHAPTER EIGHT
In general, the attributes for your organisation should still remain the
same. So the main changes you will need to make are to the skills for
teams.

If you are going back in time, certain technologies will not be available,
such as computers, cars and planes. So skills that deal with those will not
be available. However, Drive can be adapted to cover horse riding and
driving carriages. While weaponry will be different, it will still fit in the
same general categories of melee or ranged, etc.

Science skills become a little trickier. You might leave them as they are
and simply allow them only to cover what was known. But you may like
to put them all together as the ‘Natural Philosophy’ root skill and allow
any of the skills for Chemistry, Biology and Physics to be taken under it.

If you are moving into the future, the problem will be not removing skills
but adding to the listing. However, this should still just be a case of adding
skills to the current root skills. So spacecraft pilot might come under Pilot
and laser gun under Ranged combat.

When it comes to weapons and equipment, that’s mostly up to you.

Weapons can be amended using the details for modern weapons as a
guide. You may wish to have different forms of armour for different types
of weapons, but it all depends how crazy you want to go.

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 E x ample C abal s

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
To give you an idea of what you can do with the game, we offer the
following examples. They show you what sort of thing you can do with
the game, and might act as a springboard for your own organisations and
ideas.

You can use any of these organisations instead of creating your own. But
you might also use any of them as rivals or allies.

Originally, the examples I put together were based on a few TV

shows and some ideas I came up with. But when it came to creating a
Kickstarter, I realised the examples would be a great place to bring in
some more writers for Stretch Goals. As it turned out, things went rather
well, so I’ve been able to add several new organisations from a crew of
exceptionally talented RPG writers. In fact, it went so well I realised the
page count might become an issue, so I’ve cut my original examples from
this edition. But fear not; as a thank you to my awesome backers, I’ll be
releasing those as a small (and free) accompanying pdf.

The following organisations don’t come with teams already prepared.

Team selection is one of the ways that players tell the Gamemaster what
sort of a game they want to play. It is also better for each player to create
their own team members themselves. As the system is designed to put
teams together pretty quickly, this should not be a problem. So you can
consider teams to be the ‘customisation option’ for each organisation.
Having said that, we do offer a few details about the sort of teams you
might like to create for each organisation.

So, welcome to the world of Cabal through the eyes of some of the best
writers in the gaming scene. The brief I gave the crew was wide open,
and I’ve encouraged them to go a little crazy. So you’ll find a selection of
great organisations that push the envelope, from the frightening, to the
heroic, to the absurd…

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 C ata
byC B
stro phic S al vation & S alva ge , I n c .
am anks
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Rescue team
500 point organisation

In a world of constant danger and turmoil from natural disasters,

military coups, and industrial crises, the men and women of Catastrophic
Salvation & Salvage (CS&S, known affectionately as the Hammerheads,
after the distinctive shape of their vehicles) are the premier global
rescue organization. Directed from their hidden Mediterranean island
base by the mysterious Commander Sphinx, the Hammerheads stay
tuned to word of crises and catastrophes and, when such events erupt,
head directly to the disaster site. Each Hammerhead vehicle has its own
specialized role, and each Hammerhead team is likewise trained at the
expert level in a variety of crucial skills.

There are five known Hammerhead vehicles, each of which is capable of

flight and carrying at least a single Hammerhead crisis response team.
Two are modular and can be configured for a variety of emergencies.
One is a command centre with high altitude operations ability. One is a
high-speed first response craft with supersonic engines and a powerful
sensor package. The last Hammerhead functions as an amphibious craft,
allowing the Hammerhead team to respond to deep-sea emergencies as
well as those on the surface and in the air.

To the rest of the world, Catastrophic Salvation & Salvage is a cipher.

News organizations and journalists have caught the Hammerhead
vehicles on film frequently but, whether due to scrambler devices or pull
in the media, no clear footage or detailed description has ever been made
public. This is to the benefit of CS&S’ mission, which is to remain neutral
in political affairs and focus solely on rescuing victims of disasters and
recovering property where possible.

The United Nations is reportedly kept abreast of the activity of the

Hammerheads, and from time to time has even put out a call for their
assistance. That Commander Sphinx responds is likely due to the crisis at
hand, not because he believes his team of specialists and rescue machines
is under any UN obligation. CS&S’ communications network is extensive
and top of the line, which has allowed them to listen in on distress calls
long before they become known to other authorities.

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 C atastrop h ic S alvat i o n & S al va g e , I nc .

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 75 Prestige 10
Resources 75 Façade 45
Foundation 30 Pressures 15

Arcane Employees
Influence 20 Loyalty 60
Secrecy 50 Specialists 75
Knowledge 45

Team Construction
The Hammerhead teams are assigned to one of the Hammerhead
vehicles, but within each team the specialists cover a wide range of useful
skills that help them succeed at their missions under great stress. So a
special occupation package is available to Hammerhead teams:

Rescue Specialist
Hand-to-Hand Any (2)
Physicality Any (2)
Pilot Hammerhead (2)
Small Arms Pistol (2)
Survival Any (2)

On occasion, a Hammerhead team might not be assigned to a

Hammerhead vehicle at all; one such scenario might be when forming
a group assigned to a specific strategic response installation, like a
medical team or a security team. But these are far less common than
the specialists who pilot the Hammerhead vehicles themselves out to the
crisis zone.

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 T hDe M orF Cphea n O rder
by avid hapman
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Conspiracy
440 point organisation

With its origins in ancient Egypt, the Morphean Order is an elite group
of precognitive and skilled dreamers who remained close to those in
power, advising and manipulating the course of history. They exist in the
shadows, though none would listen to their warning of coming wars or
disasters.

In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, those with psychic abilities
were recruited by governments on both sides, and some who continued
the ideals of the Morphean Order were once again given the chance to
voice their precognitive dreams to those who would listen.

These classified projects have long since been disbanded and “debunked”,
but the Morphean Order continues, working in the shadows and
influencing those in power. The Order is not large, usually a board of
twelve members who are spread across the world. Each has the ability
of lucid dreaming and, more importantly, precognitive dreaming. Their
abilities are rare and treasured, the members rarely venturing out into
the world themselves, remaining isolated and protected, usually in remote
areas away from the mental noise of civilization and technology. They
meet in their dreams, with the ability to share dreams through telepathy
across the globe.

If an event of significant importance is predicted, such as a political wrong

turn or a disaster, they will engage a lower level psychic operative to get
close to those in power, and telepathically enter their dreams and shape
their future decisions. This can be influencing stock market trading,
warning the security council of an assassination attempt, informing an
airline of a fault in one of their planes, or urging military leaders to resist
acting on their desire to retaliate.

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 T h e M o rp h ea n O r d e r

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Manipulate the powerful to save themselves
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 40 Façade 0
Foundation 25 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 50 Loyalty 80
Secrecy 80 Specialists 35
Knowledge 70

Some have taken it upon themselves to assassinate those who would not
listen in order to save many more lives, though the decision to conduct
such an action does not come lightly. They fund their relatively quiet
lives with subtle predictions of the stock market, and continue to remain
unnoticed, unheard and undreamt of.

However, the world is changing, and not for the better. The Morphean
Order may have to step out of the shadows and into more dreams.

Team Construction
The Morphean Order employs skilled psychics and telepaths, though
some have breaking and entering skills for closer access to their targets.
They usually work alone, or in very small teams, and only meet their
“employers” in shared dreams, meeting visually strange “avatars” to
avoid exposing their true identities.

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 CB h iLl d r eVn o f N ic h o la s : P u e r i S a n ct i N i ch o la i
y uca olpino
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Religious Fanatic Group

450-point organisation

The Children of Nicholas (also known as “Nickies”) is, in appearance,

a group not much different from the Boy Scouts, but with a greater
religious accent. It was founded in the late 50s by Don Gelsomino Manna,
a catholic priest, with the stated mission to help children from poorer
families in the suburbs of Milan and Rome. It then spread to several major
cities in Europe, America and northern Africa. The Nickies are divided
into three “circles”: children between 13 (the youngest age at which
they are admitted) and 16 are called “messengers”. They are divided in
“houses” of 6-10 children, each house taking the name of a famous saint
(e.g. House Anthony). At the head of each house there’s a “guardian”
(a 16 - 20 year old Nickie), and the third circle is the “shepherds”, adults
starting at 21.

This is all façade. Unknown to even most of the Nickies, there’s a fourth,
inner circle, created by Don Gelsomino and a few other laymen and
priests. This inner circle was disappointed by the modernisation of the
Catholic Church, so they created a group to revive the “glories” of the
Inquisition. Most people think that the “Saint Nicholas” to which the
group is dedicated is Nicholas of Myra (the origin of Santa Claus). But for
members of the Inner Circle, it is Nicholas Eymerich, Inquisitor General in
the 1300s and author of the Inquisitors’ Handbook.

The Inner Circle gathers information through the many houses and
chapters to locate those who they deem a danger to the integrity of the
Church. To this end, Nickies are encouraged to volunteer for charitable
activities in all the cities where they are represented. At the end of a
“working” day, Nickies write a detailed report of what they did and
what they saw, which is given to their guardian. The guardian has been
trained to spot certain activities and report them to the shepherds who,
in turn, send a summary to the Inner Circle. Most of the “intermediaries”
are ignorant of the goals of the organisation, which are known only to a
select few shepherds. If the Inner Circle thinks an intervention is needed,
they send a team – an Inquisitor, a Torturer and one or more Witnesses.
The first is usually a priest, while the others are charged with “taming”
the victim.

The Inner Circle must work in secret, even from the main body of the
Catholic Church, which is today absolutely opposed to these activities.
That is why the resources of the organisation are relatively scarce.
However, thanks to the propagation of the Nickies, it can rely on many
Church-owned buildings on every continent.
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 C h ild r e n o f N i ch olas

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 40 Prestige 10
Resources 30 Façade 50
Foundation 60 Pressures 10

Arcane Employees
Influence 30 Loyalty 90
Secrecy* 60 Specialists 10
Knowledge 60

Only two very backward Cardinals know the truth of the organisation,
and they are the main source of finances and equipment for the
organisation – besides helping to keep its secrets.

Team Construction
The Children of Nicholas operative teams always contain at least
one priest and also a ‘facilitator’ (who functions as a torturer and
interrogator). They specialise in extractions, where they kidnap one or
more “suspects” for heresy and bring them to an uninhabited building for
interrogation. The priest may be an exorcist, if the case requires one.

A different kind of team is the “informers”: these teams are entirely

made of teenage Nickies, ignorant of the true objective of their
organisation. They are intent on information-gathering missions given to
them by a shepherd. Nickies are innocent, and they have no idea of the
true goals of their mission – although, when all the people they “help”
start disappearing, the smarter among them might get a hint…

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 T eJc h neD
by ason urall
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Covert Technology and Information Group

570-point organisation

This minor secret society is devoted wholly to the development of

advanced technology based on principles originating in antiquity, thought
lost to the modern world but instead concealed and fostered in secrecy.
Techne has existed in some form for most of recorded history, though the
organisation’s institutional memory extends only as far back as the kingdom
of Ur sometime around 3000 BC. At this time it was nothing but a small
faction within the priesthood of Enki, the Mesopotamian trickster god of
craftsmanship, wisdom, and invention.

The cult’s earliest work developed from sacred incantations, a primitive form
of neurolingistic coding, utilizing mnemonic devices and vocal modulation
to manipulate human perception and behaviour. Through a combination
of sacred incantations and political acumen, this sect of priests forged a
theocratic society that continued for thousands of years, until brought low
by a combination of ecological disaster and war. The sect codified these
principles and their work, inscribing them upon clay tablets, the most durable
means of storage known to them. These tablets and what they contained
were called the lamadu igsum, “the knowledge-gift”. Initiates would study
these tablets and recite the phraseology, unlocking hidden wisdom beyond
that encoded into the tiny, dense lines of cuneiform incisions.

Long after the collapse of the Fertile Crescent region civilisations that
birthed the sect, initiates learned these sacred incantations, adding newl
fields of expertise to the corpus of knowledge possessed within the lamadu
igsum. Alchemy, metallurgy, engineering, astronomy, chirurgery, and other
fields became part of the lamadu igsum. This secret knowledge was shared
sparingly with the outside world, usually in the sect’s best interests. The
sect migrated to Greece, circa 900 BC, and some within the group named
themselves the techne, or “makers”. They did not control all development
of science and industry, but theirs was the secret tradition at the heart of it,
influencing and guiding the progress of societal technological advancement,
though the developments and principles they guarded most closely were as
the chainsaw is to the stone axe.

The Techne were never great in number, a few hundred at their height and
a dozen or so priest-engineers at their most desperate. They have survived
millennia since, a secret order passing along technology beyond and parallel
to that of the civilized world. The marvels they constructed have occasionally
slipped out of their grasp, ending up in reliquaries or treasure hoards, or
accidentally discovered after being thought lost. These include such items

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 T ec h n e

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 90 Façade 10
Foundation 20 Pressures 40

Arcane Employees
Influence 30 Loyalty 70
Secrecy 90 Specialists 70
Knowledge 90

as the aeolipile steam engine, the Antikythera mechanism, the Parthian

batteries, the flexible metal called vitrium flexile, Greek fire, and other
enigmatic oddities that continue to baffle archaeologists and anthropologists.
Their saucer-shaped flying machines have confounded historians, and given
rise to all manner of superstitions and schisms within conventional scientific
communities worldwide.
At times, the Techne have verged on dying out, with their mysteries lost
forever, or exposed to an unready world. But in recent decades they have
grown increasingly brazen in their release of their formerly secret knowledge
through overt or covert methods, rapidly spurring a technological arms
race against an unknown rival. The Techne are aggressively recruiting from
within the increasingly disaffected scientific community, offering research
grants for classified projects, often in the guise of nonexistent government
agencies, shell corporations, or research groups cloaked in secrecy. Recruits
are tested along ideological lines and, if deemed worthy, are granted access
to the lamadu igsum, now a closely-guarded holographic data source, with
links into governmental and corporate research files and data sets that are
conventionally unavailable.

Team Construction
A Techne team is generally an independent covert research group, only
one or two of whom will have any idea about the true nature of their
organisational ties and the ultimate purpose of their work. Scientific and
technological research is parcelled out and developed in parallel in these cells,
with only a few key individuals aware of all development. Techne employs a
select few agents, field operatives devoted to security and countermeasures,
usually provided with equipment and training beyond anything known to
modern espionage, and their secret language is Akkadian, a long-dead
language few living souls are able to understand when spoken.

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Jeremiah Gutierrez (Order #26536437)
 T hDe A egisW PI nstru m ent
by arren earce
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Secretive guiding technomancer group

690 point organisation

Mission Statement: To guide mankind in technological understanding, to

protect against the machine-spirits that seek to threaten our existence.
The Aegis Instrument is the modern-day equivalent of the Aegis, a group
of magic-using individuals who have always had the edge when it comes
to machines. They have been responsible for guiding mankind from early
days, providing (through magical means) some of the more impressive
technological breakthroughs — which they claim to gain from their
occult knowledge, fed from some machine consciousness somewhere in
the future. The Aegis, for example, were at the forefront of one of the
first prime mover machines in 100 BC; the waterwheel, which was an
adaptation of the Noria used in ancient Egypt and Sumeria.

Today, the Aegis Instrument serves a dual role; they guide the
development of technology but also use their power to protect the world
against incursions from other planes. The more mankind evolves and the
more complex their lives become, the more other corporations attempt
to harness powers that they simply are not ready for. Whilst the Aegis
Instrument views itself as the sole guardian of these secrets, they do not
seek to keep the secrets out of everyone’s hands, just those who prove
themselves incapable of understanding.

The Aegis Instrument prefers to be a guiding hand behind the scenes;

they try and keep their Cabal a secret from the eyes of the world and do
their work in the dark. They know there are machine spirits that lurk at

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 A e g i s I n s t r ume n t

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 70 Facade 10
Foundation 70 Pressures 80

Arcane Employees
Influence 90 Loyalty 80
Secrecy 90 Specialists 50
Knowledge 90

the edges of perception, taking hold of mundane technology and turning

it against their masters. They can only guess at the widespread panic that
could ensue once mankind learns the truth.

Life in the Aegis Instrument is one of learning, mastering their techno-

magic powers and researching new technologies in the hidden labs
around the world. They are plugged into the information super-highway
and many of the members can communicate directly with complex
machines via their abilities.

Aegis Instrument operatives are usually highly skilled in both magic and
technology, coming from the hacker world, the I.T. departments and
scientific communities around the globe. They spend their time fixing
magical viruses and countering machine-entity breaches in various
countries.

It is possible to find many Aegis Instrument operatives and leaders

in various positions of influence and power across a wide gamut of
technology and software companies.

Team Construction
The Aegis Instrument fields operatives that are familiar with technology,
how to fix simple and complex machines. They do not have many military
operatives, but there are those of them who are trained to fight at the
most basic level in case a machine-spirit becomes hostile. They are a
Cabal of thinkers more than fighters, but can get their hands dirty if
they have to. Expect to see teams made up of mostly hackers, scientists,
engineers — but remember that 90% of all operatives will also have
magical training and power.
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 TB h Ne H eritage
y J
imrod ones
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Secret order of demonologists

666 point organisation

The Heritage, properly titled The Sacred Heritage of the Grand Magister
Solomon Rex, trace their tradition from the court of King Solomon;
known for his control over demons. In 1535, the German demonologist,
Dr. Johann Georg Faust, founded The Heritage on Solomon’s techniques.
As he travelled, he carefully cultivated the idea that he was a charlatan
and a fraud amongst the common folk, all the while gathering true
believers and students of his true teachings. Through his magical
influences, the German Emperor was victorious in his endeavours, but
Faust also gathered many enemies, whom he dealt with behind the
mask of charlatanry. To preserve the secrecy of his growing order and
escape his enemies, Faust faked his own death in 1541, which, with a
little help from his followers, perpetuated the belief that he had been
claimed by the devil. His followers adopted the name “Faustus” so as to
be recognised where they go by potential recruits and to help spread the
legacy.

Over the next two centuries, the order grew in power and influence
across much of Europe. Continuing their founder’s ambitions, they
used their power over demons to affect the course of human history;
toppling governments, granting success in political, military and economic
endeavours, and gaining positions of personal power. However, in the late
18th Century, The Heritage came into conflict with the Illuminati, who
sought to rid the world of their supernatural influence. This secret war
seriously damaged The Heritage, losing them a lot of power. The opening
salvo in their war was control of the American Colonies — a war they
lost, but one they actively seek to refight.

Not as strong as they once were, the current inner circle, in addition to
advancing their overall agenda of gaining power, seek to acquire relics and
artefacts, some of which were in their possession prior to their conflict
with the Illuminati. They hope that these may grant them an advantage
over their enemies and let them accumulate greater power. Meanwhile,
they are chasing rumours that their founder, Dr. Faust, is still alive and
seek to find him that he may be restored to former glory!

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 T he S acred H e r i ta g e o f t h e G r a n d M agister

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
S olom o n R e x
Logistics Opinion
Finances 60 Prestige 60
Resources 60 Façade 0
Foundation 40 Pressures 66

Arcane Employees
Influence 70 Loyalty 70
Secrecy 70 Specialists 80
Knowledge 90

Team Construction
The Heritage seeks involvement from all walks of life. The jobless mystic
with an interest in demons may prove to be tomorrow’s entrepreneurial
success story, with some guidance. Aside from pursuing the myriad
avenues of power acquisition, the Heritage also organises archaeological
and relic hunting expeditions under the guise of affluent collectors. On
occasion, they need to eliminate an enemy; in such cases, they get –
creative. Of course, their greatest allies are demons, but the Gamemaster
should decide whether they (and magic) are real, and they certainly
aren’t playable.

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 T hCe O rdin
by hadB
ary F ell ows of S myth
owser
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Demon-hunting group of bookbinders

460 point organisation

Back in the day, trafficking in demons wasn’t as risky as it is today. Skilled

demonologists knew how to sew the demons into the bindings of books
once they were done with their bargains. That is why they call it a binding
spell, after all! As time wore on, those skilled in the arts of book binding
became fewer and fewer, but those interested in calling up demons
showed no signs of abating.

Where once there were Ordinary Fellows of Smyth in every city and
most towns around the world, they now find themselves relegated to
working out of used book shops, book restoration facilities, and the
occasional library. They’ve also become a greying organisation; they
find themselves in the unenviable position of losing more members each
year to old age than they are able to recruit. Because of this, each loss
is deeply felt and members haunt occult book stores, arts colleges, and
antiquarian book fairs, looking for fresh blood.

The Ordinary Fellows of Smyth’s secrecy stems not from any overt desire
to be clandestine. Very few people know that demons are real (entering
into tens of thousands of damning bargains every year) or that people
who are really into binding books could do anything greater with their
lives. And the organisation has come to like it that way. Where once they
had to cloak their operations in secrecy, sallying forth from monasteries
in the countryside under the cloak of darkness or delving into the trade
in evil from the recesses of cavernous libraries on university campuses,
now they can load a few books into the backseat of a beat-up car and
take a road trip the latest demon ground.

The teams fielded by the Ordinary Fellows are erudite scholars who
know their way around an incunabula. These brave men and women
believe that having as much information as possible before wading into
a demonic situation is the only way to ensure they survive. The research
wing of the group not only has the original Clavicula Salomonis and
the earliest treatises on heka at their fingertips, but also the wealth of
information the internet has to offer. Just because their binding spells are
old school doesn’t mean their research techniques are. Field teams are
made up of those who’ve shown a magical inclination, coupled with years,
if not decades, of book binding training, combined with a few toughs who
serve as muscle should things get physical.

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 T he O r d i na r y F ello ws o f S m y th

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 20 Prestige 10
Resources 40 Façade 10
Foundation 20 Pressures 10

Arcane Employees
Influence 30 Loyalty 90
Secrecy 90 Specialists 50
Knowledge 90

The Ordinary Fellows know they’re fighting a losing battle with time,
but they can’t give up. They know the risks demons pose to the world;
should one ever bargain its way into the leadership of a major nation the
world might just be doomed. It’s that fear that keeps them carrying on.

Team Construction
The Ordinary Fellows of Smyth are very selective about their teams.
With so few people in the organisation, they can’t afford to expend
resources on every threat that crosses their path. The Ordinary Fellows
of Smyth teams are experts in their field and as well-equipped as the
organisation can afford at the time, granted most of their stock and trade
is in knowledge, not high-tech gear. If the Ordinary Fellows need to throw
an inexperienced team to the wolves in the event of a dire emergency,
they do so with deep regret and only as a last resort.

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 T h e O c tavio R am irez S o ciety for the
P rAe s ervation of H istori cal S ites
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

by ndiN ewton

Spirit-wielding secret society

540 point organisation

The Octavio Ramirez Society for the Preservation of Historical Sites sees
itself as the world’s shield against evil.

There are a lot of horrible things in this world. Not just men and women
who will stop at nothing to amass power and wealth, either. Darker
things. Older things. Things not of this world. Things that cannot be
stopped with bullets and knives. Which is why the Octavio Ramirez
Society for the Preservation of Historical Sites has harnessed a more
powerful weapon – the spirits of those who have gone before. “Death
does not absolve us of our responsibility to this world.” Octavio Ramirez,
the society’s founder, spoke those words to the first ghost he awoke
and convinced it to fight beside him. Now those words hang beside
the door of every dimly lit, poorly outfitted office the Ramirez Society
has scattered around the globe. A reminder that the group’s members
are fighting something that is far more powerful than they are, but for
a cause more than worth dying for. Their families. Their friends. Their
entire world.

For the most part, though, the members of the Ramirez Society limit
themselves to research. A ghost must willingly give up its rest to fight.
While those who have died most recently are the easiest to convince,
older spirits are more powerful. Operating under its public guise as
a historical preservation group, the Ramirez Society sends teams of
researchers to cemeteries and graveyards where they find the oldest,
most time-worn gravestones. They research the history of the grave
and its occupant through town records, old books, even local legends;
anything that can help them learn about the ghost tied to that grave so
when they call it forth they can remind it why it loved this world so much
when it was alive, and why this world is still worth fighting for.

Even though the Ramirez Society is made up primarily of researchers, all

members are given at least rudimentary weapons training. The Ramirez
Society prefer to leave front line battles to their ghostly comrades, only
sending out small teams to check on the spirits in each area and recruit
additional support as necessary. Their enemies aren’t above taking out
mortal members when they encounter them, though. Over the years,
the Ramirez Society has therefore learned to make sure that even the
smallest research team includes at least one highly-experienced fighter.

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 T he O ctav i o R am i r e z S oc i e t y f o r the

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
P reservat i o n o f H i s t o ri cal S i t es
Logistics Opinion
Finances 40 Prestige 80
Resources 30 Façade 20
Foundation 30 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 20 Loyalty 90
Secrecy 80 Specialists 60
Knowledge 90

Team Construction
Members of the Ramirez Society are primarily scholars, antiquarians,
and lower level government clerks. However, the Ramirez Society values
its members’ lives too much to send them out defenseless. In addition
to basic firearms training, new members are taught self-defense and
some minor defensive magic. In general, members are allowed to define
their own area of expertise. However, the Ramirez Society tries to keep
a balance among the regional outposts, including having at least one
member who has more experience with fighting than with books.

While most teams will be human, for this organisation the Gamemaster
might allow the creation of ghost teams. Such teams would cost no extra
points, the benefits outweighing the advantages. While they can move
through walls and remain immune to physical (but not supernatural)
damage, they will find it hard to interact with other people or pick up
objects.

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 CB hMu rc h ofV the A rrival
y onica alentinelli
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Religious Zealots and Prime Movers

589-point organisation

The Church of the Arrival is a legal non-profit that bills itself as a “non-
denominational place of worship for anyone seeking enlightenment”. To
the general public and many of its attendees, the Church is as ordinary
and nondescript as the local grocery store. To its Board of Directors
and their families, however, the Church of the Arrival is an organisation
of prime movers who plot and scheme behind closed doors, planning
years in advance to further its agenda. Its agents have varying levels of
awareness about the Church’s true aims and are a motley mixture of
spies, socialites, antique dealers, gossip columnists, historians, politicians,
and propagandists. Together, they work toward a common purpose: to
prepare for the return of forgotten gods and goddesses lost to the ages.

Founded in the late 1990s, the Church of the Arrival’s structure was
modelled after Protestant megachurches scattered throughout North
America. Its first branch, which was located in upstate New York, drew
a significant number of followers leading up to the year 2000. While its
members were focused on the attraction and retention of volunteers, its
enigmatic inner circle was busy playing the long game and invested in pay-
to-play gambling and dating sites.

The money earned from these early ventures has since been funnelled
back into the megachurch to form new branches scattered throughout
multiple countries. Each has, at first, tapped into the cultural zeitgeist to
recruit new members and grow its base — along with its investments and
its prestigious Board of Directors. The members of the Board, who retain
dual (public and private) identities, are travelling eccentrics who fund
archaeological digs, help restore old relics and ancient texts, and perform
so-called “historical re-enactments” of rituals worshipping a variety of
deities and their half-human offspring.

With the exception of the Board’s interest in ancient cultures and arcane
lore, the Church of the Arrival seems like any other megachurch —
friendly, welcoming, and forgiving to all. This perception was, in fact,
a carefully crafted image designed to put the public’s minds at ease in
order to expand its ever-growing influence around the world. As a result,
though several rumours have circulated about human sacrifices and sex
magic, the average Church of the Arrival member isn’t buying what the
tabloids so loudly claim is undeniable. To them, the megachurch is their
beloved home away from home.

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 C h u rch o f t h e A r r i val

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 80 Prestige 20
Resources 60 Façade 90
Foundation 30 Pressures 00

Arcane Employees
Influence 40 Loyalty 80
Secrecy 99 Specialists 30
Knowledge 60

Team Construction
The Church of the Arrival has a multi-pronged strategy for recruitment
and deployment of its members, lay personnel, executives, and sub-
contractors. Of these four groups, deeply-embedded operatives actively
work on the Board of Directors’ next agenda alongside the rest of the
sheep, hiding in plain sight to avoid further scrutiny from outsiders.

Agents of the church often act unwittingly, as few are privy to their
deeper secrets. But given the broad range of their devotees, this gives
them a wide skill pool to choose from. The church does maintain
operatives who know their true agenda, who specialise in infiltration
and information gathering. Membership and interest in new branches
continues to rise and, thus far, the Board’s next moves have yet to be
announced.

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 G rKo t ius AF ound
by ristian B
ation for H u man R ights
jørkelo
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Human Rights Assassins

605-point organisation

Behind the respectable front of a humanitarian NGO, the Grotius

Foundation for Human Rights organises cells of assassins, saboteurs and
special operatives waging a just war against those whom they believe have
committed crimes against humanity - or are going to in the near future.
Whether they are brutal police officers acting on their own, or generals
leading groups of criminals, their enemies can never be safe. Once a team
of investigators has identified a target, the foundation sends in a strike
team of operatives with free reign to deal with them. Things can get really
messy - but it’s all for a good cause and entirely justified.

To the rest of the world the Grotius Foundation for Human Rights is
just one of many NGOs that fight against human rights transgressions,
alongside Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They are
well known for their detailed reports on human rights violations around
the world, and the United Nations often refers to their work in their
proceedings. They have offices all over the world and maintain an active
fund raising network. They were founded by Holocaust survivors and
their organisation was later joined by other survivors of human rights
abuses and war crimes.

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 G rotius F o u n dat i o n f o r H uma n R ights

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 55
Resources 60 Façade 60
Foundation 60 Pressures 65

Arcane Employees
Influence 65 Loyalty 30
Secrecy 55 Specialists 45
Knowledge 60

The founders were inspired by the work of Simon Wiesenthal, but

believed it was necessary to take things one or two steps further. Bringing
evil men to court was not enough; the organisation believes some of
them deserve death. If some have to die to prevent future holocausts,
then so be it. Now their organisation spans the world, and they pride
themselves in having stopped or avenged countless human rights abuses
and crimes through assassination and covert warfare.

The Grotius Foundation for Human Rights can serve either as an ally or
an enemy of your Cabal - all depending on how they conduct themselves.

Team Construction
While the organisation has a decent staff of PR-consultants and
bureaucrats, they rely a lot on volunteers for their public work. In
general, they deploy two types of teams - fact finding teams that assess
the situations and follow up on leads, and strike teams that deal with the
actual wet-work. Most of the fact-finding teams are unaware of the strike
teams, as they are recruited from activists, press and academia.

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 D iAs ’ k reASH en
by ngus branson
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Furry Assassins
520-point organisation

Formed in the late ‘80s as the Soviet Bloc was starting to disintegrate,
Dis’kreSHen originally made their money through blackmailing many of
the ‘Underground Millionaires’. These victims were Soviet businessmen
and criminals who had amassed deep fortunes under Communist rule,
and were quick to start legitimising their businesses and assets with the
fall of the old order. The knowledge Dis’kreSHen had of many of these
dealings would seem to indicate that the society was either founded by,
or certainly had close connections with, the KGB, Stasi, SB and other
secret police agencies within the Eastern Bloc.

Throughout the ‘90s, Dis’kreSHen continued to operate almost

exclusively within the former Eastern Bloc, but occasionally operated in
London, Rome, Vienna, and Paris. They continued to blackmail many of
Russia’s new breed of Oligarchs, some of whom had put themselves into
exile or started having more business involvement in the West. It wasn’t
until the early 2000s, after Putin had become President of Russia, that
Dis’kreSHen expanded into contract hits and discrete assassinations.
These often got overlooked by authorities as mere accidents or suicides.
It seems that some of Dis’kreSHen’s earlier blackmail targets had begun
to hire the society to remove rivals, settle old scores, or in some cases
just ‘shake things up’.

This prompted the society to begin acting on a more global scale, with
agents being employed in the Americas, Asia and Africa, as well as
throughout Europe. Their customer, and target, base also grew well
beyond ex-Soviet or New Russian citizens. Dis’kreSHen now started
carrying out work for the disgruntled wives of millionaire businessmen,
Oil Corporations who had troublesome whistleblowers, and African
politicians who needed an old ally removed before they had a chance to
reveal what had happened to the millions in aid that had ‘disappeared’.

Dis’kreSHen’s techniques depend on the job at hand. They have solo

contractors for simple ‘hits’ as well as specialised teams when more
finesse is required. They prefer a longer lead time, so an assassination can
result in an end game that looks perfectly natural or just a series of very
unfortunate events for the intended mark. Custom hits have become a
speciality, so if you want to destroy your business partner’s marriage or
get him investigated by the police before he finally tips over the edge with
a custom designed ‘suicide’, then you know who to try and contact.

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 D i s ’ kr e SH e n

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 70 Façade 0
Foundation 20 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 50 Loyalty 90
Secrecy 70 Specialists 80
Knowledge 80

No one knows the identities of the leaders of Dis’kreSHen, nor do

their agents know one another by their real identities. All interactions,
when they are carried out in person or over a video feed, are conducted
in disguise. The disguises generally involve the agent’s head being
completely covered by either an elaborate mask or a fursuit head, such as
those often worn in the ‘furry’ communities. These are also often worn
on the actual ‘jobs’ themselves.

Team Construction
Dis’kreSHen has a wide range of employees. Many have worked
for covert agencies and government intelligence groups. Most are
from Eastern Europe but it’s not unusual to have operatives of other
nationalities these days.

The majority of employees are intelligence gatherers – both computer

specialists (hackers) as well as field operatives (tailing and photographing
marks, infiltrating organisations, gaining the trust of targets, skilled
burglars, etc). Dis’kreSHen also has a number of specialised assassins on
their books, be they snipers, bomb makers or specialists in poisons.

A standard unit would consist of a single ‘Frontman’ (the ‘face’ of the

operation), the assassin (either to make the hit, or to protect the unit
should it attract any unwanted attention) and a team of two or more
auxiliary members for information gathering, surveillance, etc.

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 TBh eGC h ippiRn g C-Hal d r o n T i d y T o w n s C o mm i t t e e
y areth yder anrahan
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Occult geomancers, secret masters of the world (Tea and cakes at 11)
500 point organisation

Older than Stonehenge or Glastonbury, the Aldbury Earthworks is a

wellspring of supernatural power. Ancient mounds, snake-twist tracks,
glyphs and figures carved into the chalky hills, buried stones… once,
druids and sorcerers flayed the living earth in search of the planet’s veins
and arteries of magic, and drank deep of its black blood.

That’s all forgotten, now, of course. The countryside around the

Earthworks is a patchwork of fields and orchards and quaint little villages.
It’s lovely. The Aldbury Earthworks slumber beneath the green fields and
neatly cropped hedgerows of little England.

Well, almost forgotten. The Chipping Caldron Tidy Towns Committee

remembers. They know that torrents of unimaginable telluric power
cascade through their back gardens and down the main street. They
know that the fate of the world can be changed through the tiniest
alterations to the physical conditions around the Aldbury Earthworks.
Trim Mrs. Faversham’s rosebush thusly, and the world economy quivers.
Block the drains on Farrier’s Lane, and bring drought from Karachi to
Laos. Brexit happened because a cat got into Mr. Horville’s chicken
coop. As above, so below – changes to the twelve towns around the
Earthworks resound a billion-fold in the wider world. As Chipping
Caldron goes, so goes the world.

The Tidy Towns Committee is a secret Cabal dedicated to preserving the

Aldbury Earthworks – and hence, the world – from any forces that might
endanger or conquer it. They also need to keep an eye the ordinary folk
of Chipping Caldron; most people in the village aren’t aware that they
live in a locus of magical power, and that their slightest act has cosmic
repercussions. The Tidy Towns Committee bears an ancient and sacred
duty handed down through the centuries; they may look like a bunch of
pensioners and busybodies obsessed with littering and the floral borders
around the Village Green, but they’re the secret masters of the world,
and they have access to magical secrets of the druids, vast wealth (it’s
easy to get rich when you can command the earth and have it spit up
diamonds and gold into your allotment garden), and a sworn order of
assassins.

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 C hipping C ald r o n T i n y T own s C ommittee

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 60 Prestige 10
Resources 50 Façade 10
Foundation 40 Pressures 10

Arcane Employees
Influence 70 Loyalty 50
Secrecy 80 Specialists 40
Knowledge 80

Their foes are legion. The Lower Loxhedge Village Fete Committee, for
example – probably a rogue KGB cell. Those New Age Travellers down
in Potter’s Field are definitely agents of the Chaos Gods. And as for those
chaps over at Weishaupt Development… build a new road? More like new
world order!

So, who’s going to arrange to get the duck pond mucked out before
Atlantis rises?

Team Construction
The Tidy Towns Committee has two sorts of teams – clueless volunteers
from the village who can be manipulated into performing secret missions,
and elite squads of druid assassin sorcerers trained from birth to serve
the Cabal.

Sometimes, they need to combine the two; Nigel can go convince Old
Mrs Sauskind to get rid of that old shed, while the death squad holds
off the cyborg ninjas who are determined to keep that shed – and the
geopolitical nexus of corrupt regimes it anchors – in place.

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 T oCy o sato
by hrisH
H igh S c hoo l
artford
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

‘High School Wars’ Setting

270-point organisation

The relationships people build at school, college and university often

remain with them through their life, shaping it and defining who they are.

School clubs can be central to this – the pop music club who lift the spirits
of those around them; the computer club educating the next generation
of software developers (and hackers); the sports team who go from
zeroes to heroes. Others are less benign – the clique within a clique that
ensures only the right people reach positions of power and influence in
the government or business (or magic).

Toyosato High School is one such institution – it could just as easily be

an American High School or a British secondary school – where clubs
fight each other for recognition and the school’s limited after-school
budget. As ever, there’s the traditional jocks vs. nerds conflict – typified
at Toyosato by the co-ed baseball team and the literature society – but
one of the most bitter conflicts this year is between two of the music
societies.

Though neither the pop music club nor the classical music society
operate in the same circles, their rivalry knows no bounds. The school
Commencement Festival in April and the Summer Festival in August are
the only times the Springtime Girls and The Conservatoire go head-to-
head, but that doesn’t prevent their members from being antagonistic
for the rest of the year. At the town festival, an uneasy detente exists
between the two clubs as they attempt to work together to show the
school in the best light.

Team Construction
The conflict between the Toyosato clubs is designed to be played out
between teams. But each player might instead create their own club as an
organisation for a ‘Cabal War’ (expanding the conflict to include more
clubs). In this case, you should scale down the range of each Attribute
(so a high rating only covers the high school and nearby town). Teams
for such groups will be less numerous, but more specialised. Untrained
teams will be pupils with no aptitude who just want to be part of the club
in question.

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 S tanda r d T o y o sat o S ch o ol C lu b

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50* Prestige 33*
Resources 35 Façade 30
Foundation 10 Pressures 10

Arcane Employees
Influence 20 Loyalty 40
Secrecy 10 Specialists 12
Knowledge 20

* The Springtime Girls are limited to 20 Finance

** The Conservatoire are limited to a prestige of 10

T oyos ato H igh S cho ol P op m u s ic clu b : “S p r ingtime G irl s ”

The “Springtime Girls” are a light and fluffy school band whose main
challenges are being taken seriously and ensuring there is enough tea
and cake to go round. They are popular among their peers despite not
really being any good. Most of the girls’ performances are linked to
school festivals and the occasional town matsuri. However, peer pressure
occasionally leads to impromptu classroom performances, with desks
pushed together to form a rickety stage. Most of the members (with
the notable exception of Sumire) are from middle- or working-class
backgrounds, whose entry to Toyosato was a result of scholarships and
state quotas.

Uniform: School uniform; cosplay

Employees: Sumire Miyazono (rich – bankrolls the club; vocals and bass
guitar; excitable); Beatrice “B-Chan” Shaw (English exchange student;
lead vocals and keyboard player); Noa Taketatsu (sporty tomboy with a
penchant for baseball; Saori’s older sister; rhythm guitar); Megumi Sakura
(brainy but shy; saxophone and keyboards); Saori Taketatsu (junior
bandmember who serves as the club mascot – also the only sensible
member of the band; drummer); Ohana Hamada (faculty advisor; lazy
and overly fond of sake; bass guitar).

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 T oyos at o H i g h S ch o ol C las s ical M usic S ociety
“T he C o n s e r vat o i r e ”
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

“The Conservatoire” are the mirror image of the “Springtime Girls”

– regimented, technically brilliant and with a constant expression of
distaste. They’re not a band but rather a collection of highly skilled
and competitive individuals. They have no understanding of why their
technical brilliance and rigidity of form doesn’t earn them the same
recognition as the Pop Music Club. Most of The Conservatoire’s
performances are at music competitions where deviation from proscribed
limits is frowned upon, and innovation is regarded as a cardinal sin.
Conformity and excellence are the only way to win! With the exception
of Nagata-sensei, all members of the Conservatoire are upper-class/trust-
fund students.

Uniform: School uniform; formal wear

Employees: Natsuki Kaji (fiery schemer; violinist); Ryota Yamazaki
(cold, precise and highly-strung; classical pianist); Alice Nagumo (elegant
ice-maiden; cellist); Inori Sonozaki (sweet and kind airhead, the only
unselfish member of the Conservatoire; close friends with Megumi from
the Springtime Girls; flautist); Daisuke Tominaga (arrogant baseball player
with a vicious-streak a mile wide that he usually directs at Noa from the
Springtime Girls; trombonist) ; Keiichi Nagata (faculty advisor – passes
himself off as a refined classical guitar virtuoso, but has a secret past).

R um our s a n d li e s
• How much of B-chan’s “Sorry, I don’t understand” is true? Is she
really Gaijin?
• Didn’t Noa have a younger brother? Is Saori really Satoshi?
• Someone saw Alice-chan smile once. Surely that ruins her “ice-
maiden” reputation.
• Tominaga-Kun seems to fight with Noa-chan all the time, but is it
genuine? Daisuke and Noa, sitting in a tree ...
• Megumi-chan seems to have her own fan-club. Is Sonozaki-chan the
club president?
• Nagata-sensei is a fine guitarist, but seems to have a hatred of the
current craze for Tokyo Skunk posters (a working-class punk band
from a decade back). Is it because their lead guitarist looks like him?

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 EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

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 T hWe M idsu
by C
alt
mm er D ream ers
iechanowski
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Enigmatic conspiracy group

320-point organisation

The Midsummer Dreamers is a covert organisation dedicated to

discovering why its own members are missing memories. The
organisation gets its name from the fact that all of its members are
missing a large block of their memories from a few weeks last summer. In
most cases those affected have alternate memories of that time that don’t
hold up to scrutiny. While its members try to discover what happened to
them, other memories since then become suspect.

The leader of the Midsummer Dreamers is known only as Control.

Control seems to have the resources of a small corporation, but whether
Control is actually in charge of a corporation, independently wealthy,
or simply well-connected to other wealthy Midsummer Dreamers is
unknown. Control goes to great pains to remain anonymous; those who
have personally met Control have wildly different descriptions of build,
ethnicity, and gender.

Control recruits new operatives by keeping an eye out for amnesiacs in

hospitals, social media, and other methods where someone’s aberrant
memories throw up a red flag. Control has also learned that those
Midsummer Dreamers that aren’t recruited in time tend to disappear or
meet violent ends (which makes for a potent recruiting pitch!). Control
refers to the agents of this unknown threat as “Scrubbers”.

In general, the Midsummer Dreamers are trained in covert operations

and sent to investigate some of the aberrations in their own histories,
in the hopes that something jars a memory and helps the organisation
uncover who’s been manipulating their memories and for what purpose,
all the while avoiding revealing themselves to any Scrubbers along the
way.

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 M i d s umm e r D r eame r s

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 20 Façade 40
Foundation 20 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 20 Loyalty 40
Secrecy 80 Specialists 30
Knowledge 10

Team Construction
The Midsummer Dreamers come from all walks of life; they seem to have
been chosen more for their lack of social lives and contacts than for their
skill set. An office cubicle worker, an underemployed college graduate
online gamer, a server at an out-of-the-way diner, and a state park ranger
are all good choices; people who won’t be missed as long as they don’t
have many social ties. Such operatives are inexperienced when they
first get into the field, but their anger over who stole parts of their lives
motivates them to see missions through.

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 SB alisb
J
ury S eamstresses and T yson T ailors
y enniferB rozek
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Freelance assassins of retired bad guys

490 point organisation

Salisbury Seamstresses and Tyson Tailors is a secretive society of older,

wiser, and meaner “seamstresses” and “tailors”. With a minimum age of
sixty, these skilled assassins have taken on the duty of making retired bad
guys pay. Just because a criminal (known or unknown) has gone straight
doesn’t mean they don’t have sins to atone for.

Working out of retirement homes, senior living facilities, hospitals, church

groups, book clubs, Saturday chess games in the park, Bingo nights,
and anywhere else old folks congregate to pass the time and chew the
fat, they identify targets and draw up assassination plans. Nothing like a
bunch of geezers to gossip with and gather information from. This loosely
organized syndicate specializes in infiltration and unsuspected murder.

Benefiting from the fact that old people are everywhere and practically
invisible to most people, Seamstresses and Tailors have the time and
money to spend ferreting out the perfect way to make retired gangsters,
evil politicians, and malevolent retirees atone for the sins they’ve
committed. Self-policing and generally never hired from the outside,
Seamstresses and Tailors themselves bring their quarries to their local
groups for discussion.

Recent advances in technology and the acceptance of online gaming with

MMORPGs has allowed this syndicate to expand their operations outside
their local areas, sending information and target requests across state,
country, and even continent lines.

In general, most people don’t know the Seamstresses and Tailors exist.
Not even other retirees—until they are recruited to the cause. They have
no specific uniform, though they do tend to have a needle with thread
stuck into their clothing somewhere like a forgotten, half-completed
project. They cultivate an air of being scatterbrained and forgetful. They
are anything but. They use guile and their wiles to get people to give
them information, open doors, borrow equipment, and to allow them
into restricted spaces.

Most kill with a natural poison or use their quarry’s known allergies or
other health issues against them.

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 S al isb ury S eam s t r es s e s a n d T y s o n T ailors

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 10
Resources 50 Façade 30
Foundation 75 Pressures 30

Arcane Employees
Influence 55 Loyalty 50
Secrecy 30 Specialists 50
Knowledge 60

Team Construction
The Seamstresses and Tailors are old people with all their faculties. They
often have a variety of skills due to their long life, experiences, hobbies,
and numerous occupations. They frequently use family, friends, and
people employed to care for them to get them what they need and to
where they need to go. No one questions why grandma wants to go to
the swap meet, then to visit an old friend at the hospital—who dies soon
thereafter, of natural causes, of course—before going to tai chi class.

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 G aSn t -MByers -S hoto k u I ndustries
by tuart oon
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Genetic engineering and manufacturing group

814 point organisation

The Gant-Myers-Shotoku, or GamemasterS Industries, conglomerate

is a multinational responsible for recent ground-breaking advances in
genetic engineering and whose closely guarded operations extend across
the globe. Since its incorporation, GamemasterS has overtaken industry
leaders in the areas of pharmaceutical discovery, genetic engineering,
and nanotechnology. The company’s philanthropic business model runs
counter to that of its competitors and results in many of its innovative
technologies and biomeds being ‘gifted’ to governments, global agencies,
and non-profits. GamemasterS does not trade in the public domain and
is virtually invisible to the masses it serves; in brief, it is as secret as it is
successful.

On the surface, Gant-Myers-Shotoku is essentially a vast network

of scientists, support staff, and administrators. Beneath the surface,
however, numerous cells operate to maintain the conglomerate’s security
and secrecy, to deal with threats external and internal, corporate and
otherwise, and to spread influence and ensure compliance, where
necessary. Depending on the nature of the operation, these teams are
made up of specialist operatives with expertise in fields as diverse as
counter-terrorism and espionage, virology and chemical weapons, cyber-
intrusion and security, or high-level strategy and diplomacy. A group of
senior agents known only as The Board direct team operations and—it is
believed—report directly to Ms Gant, Mr Myers, and Ms Shotoku.

Individual agents operate invisibly and are placed for maximum

deniability. Cell teams have access to next-gen technology and each
agent is implanted with the GamemasterS Biome system. The highly
secretive Biome system offers unparalleled bio-medical monitoring and
enhancement to field agents and ensures that The Board never loses
track of an operative. Biome implantation is a condition of employment
and one that few agents regret, despite the lack of real knowledge
about the system’s true capabilities or functioning. Such concerns are
overshadowed by the often life-changing rewards agents receive for their
compliance and loyalty.

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 G a n t -M y e r s -S h o t ok u

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 95 Prestige 80
Resources 95 Façade 10
Foundation 90 Pressures 40

Arcane Employees
Influence 90 Loyalty 99
Secrecy 75 Specialists 90
Knowledge 50

While teams are acquainted, at the very least, with the name of the
faceless Board, few—if any—within Gant-Myers-Shotoku have any real
knowledge of the conglomerate’s founders. The organisation’s leaders
remain a complete mystery, as do their goals. Few, however, are troubled
by this fact when the rewards for success are so great.

Team Construction
Gant-Myers-Shotoku cell operatives are all specialists hired for their
expertise, and equipped and remunerated accordingly. Resources and
finances are generally never a problem for teams. Teams are frequently
drawn up from different cells, meaning that agents are used to working
with new faces. This is never a problem—or, if it is, no one ever hears
about it. After all, there are no problems… only solutions.

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 T h e W orshi pfu l C ir cl e of K nitters
a n d C ro c heters
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

B L
y H
ynne ardy

Guerrilla knitters saving the world one stitch at a time

610-point organisation

There are many craft guilds and institutions scattered across the
globe, but none quite so old as the Worshipful Circle of Knitters and
Crocheters. Behind the homely façade of the nation’s grannies quietly
crafting away at woolly hats for premature babies and blankets for old
folks’ homes lies a far more secret and serious enterprise; saving us from
evil, destructive creatures from Beyond.

Their knitted stitches work in one of two ways: as a colourful barrier to

these vile beings (armour, if you like), or as a fiendish web in which to
ensnare them. Particularly powerful are the little crocheted squares of
mismatched colours, made from the odds and ends they always have at
the bottom of their workbaskets.

Until recently, the members of the Worshipful Circle were struggling

due to natural attrition and to a fall in interest in handicrafts. But
then, someone hit on a brainwave: guerrilla knitting. Not only do the
apparently random acts of woollen vandalism secure sites of ancient
power against the nightmares, it has also made the hobby trendy again,
and membership is (thankfully) soaring!

Although the true work of the Circle is kept hidden, members can (and
do) hail from all sexes, genders, and walks of life. Rumours of ninja
grannies with poisoned knitting needles and handbags full of bludgeoning
jars of chutney may or may not be a bit of an exaggeration but, as OAPs
get fitter and the average age of the membership decreases, the knitters
and crocheters on the front line are certainly far more active now than at
any time in recent history.

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 T h e W o r s h ip f ul C i rcle

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 45 Prestige 70
Resources 50 Façade 75
Foundation 70 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 30 Loyalty 90
Secrecy 80 Specialists 50
Knowledge 50

Team Construction
The Worshipful Circle really does field the most varied specialists,
from grey-haired old ladies with an encyclopaedic knowledge of craft
techniques to tech-savvy youths with a penchant for Fair Isle, developing
complex new patterns to trap the constantly evolving forms of evil. With
an ever-expanding lay membership, they can also call on a wide range of
non-specialists, although the use of complete amateurs is frowned upon.
That might be the sort of thing the Embroiderers (their main rivals)
would do, but they have standards.

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 T hKe B rotherhood
by S
enneth pencer
of the D ep ths
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Followers of an Underwater Prophet

260-point organisation

Off the coast lies a ship. Down there in the deep, where the colours of
the sun are muted and twisted, where blue and green disappear and the
pressure is barely what an unprotected diver can stand, the ship waits.
For how long no one can say, for the ship’s secrets cannot be divined
through the normal means. There are no artefacts that can be dated, no
sequence of pottery styles that can be referenced, for the ship is not of
this time and place, nor of any that humanity has bothered to note.

Carlos and Diego Piñon were sport divers who liked to explore wrecks;
the deeper and more pristine the better. One warm Saturday, they took
their boat out and, using a modified sonar system meant to locate deep
water schools of fish, found the ship. Inside its rusting flanks, the brothers
found an empty room that held a glowing light that spoke to them. It
told of a coming plague and gave the name of the patient zero, as well as
the date and place of arrival in their city. It spoke of a person who would
start a war, but who was now only a struggling art student, and gave her
address.

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 B r o t h e r ho o d o f t h e D ep t h s

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 40 Prestige 0
Resources 40 Façade 0
Foundation 10 Pressures 0

Arcane Employees
Influence 0 Loyalty 80
Secrecy 60 Specialists 20
Knowledge 10

The Voice of the Ship spoke only of things to come, only gave the most
rudimentary details, and the brothers listened. Shortly after making this
discovery, they brought others to the wreck, fellow wealthy friends who
wanted to save the world. The Brotherhood of the Depths has now
grown into a powerful secret society dedicated to interpreting and acting
upon the Voice’s prognostications. Some things they try to bring to pass,
other times they race to stop some event from happening.

Team Construction
The Brotherhood of the Depths is limited to men and women with the
skills and equipment needed to reach the Voice of the Ship and hear its
prophecies first hand. The membership is composed of people of means.
It takes hundreds if not thousands of pounds to be able to afford the
equipment and pay for the training, not to mention hundreds of hours of
free time to pursue the hobby of wreck diving. As such, it is a well-funded
Cabal, but not one whose interests are financial.

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 T hNe C ons
by R
ick
pir ators
obinson
EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE

Disinformation conspiracy
440 point organisation

While it is an old saying that knowledge is power, it is also true that

propaganda and misinformation can trump knowledge.

The Conspirators are a group who specialise in misinformation. They

spread half-truths and outright fabrications in order to fulfil their own
agendas, which can range from the purely mischievous to the outright
malevolent. It depends on what they want at that moment – or what any
client they may be working for wants.

Using the internet, The Conspirators leak information to various news,

and fake news, organisations. This can be truthful information that they
have gathered in underhand ways or, more likely, information they have
altered in order to put a negative spin on stories that would otherwise
be harmless. Then there is always the option of making things up from
scratch, which is often the best way for them to operate. If they can
formulate a conspiracy theory that blackens their target’s name, they
know that once they release it onto the web it will quickly gain advocates,
no matter how outrageous the leaps of logic that are required, and some
of these will quickly gain widespread acceptance.

Their targets are many and varied, from corporations to ordinary

individuals; from important international figures in politics and business to
small time local dignitaries. If a government wants to blacken someone’s
name but keep their own hands (mostly) clean so they have plausible
deniability, then The Conspirators may be hired. If a corporation wants
a rival to lose out on a vital contract, then something can be cooked up
to blacken the rival’s good name. Sometimes their targets are personal.
More often, they are cynically destroyed online in order to fill the bank
accounts of the group.

The group only know one another through their online personas. They
creep about on the dark web, seeking clients and new ways of getting
their ‘information’ out there. While they do not have much muscle
(although they do have some individuals they can call upon to carry out
any fieldwork they need to supplement their online activities), they are
still a very dangerous group of individuals.

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 T h e C o n sp i rat o r s

EXAMPLE CABALS
CHAPTER NINE
Logistics Opinion
Finances 50 Prestige 30
Resources 50 Façade 10
Foundation 20 Pressures 10

Arcane Employees
Influence 50 Loyalty 60
Secrecy 60 Specialists 30
Knowledge 70

Team Construction
The Conspirators have access to a small number of professional
assets who are well trained, usually ex-military or from some form of
intelligence organisation or another. Usually, they are contacted through a
third party or via a dead letter drop with instructions. Occasionally, they
will be overseen by one of the group’s senior members operating from
a remote facility. These individuals have come to the group’s attention
usually via previous clients; they are well paid mercenaries for the most
part, who remain loyal as long as the money keeps rolling in (and the
risks are not suicidal). 

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 M i ss io n S u g gestions

MISSION SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER TEN
Here are some ideas for missions. These are rough thumbnails to
jump-start your game. The intricacies are left to you. Given that the
most memorable missions will be specifically tailored to your style of
organisation, the best missions will be ones you come up with yourselves.
However, these should get you started and show you the sort of
adventure you can have building each Attribute.

The same mission with different characters and twists can be used again
and again. How these missions relate to your game will depend on
your organisation and its agenda. You may also like to mix two or three
missions together for a more involved scenario.

L ogisti cs
Logistical missions usually involve acquisition. As such, most of these
missions need corporate raiders or soldiers. It often comes down to
financial savvy or muscle. These adventures are real corporate wars,
often fought with suits and pens as much as weapons.

Finances
• You have inside information on stock. Can you use it without alerting
the competition and cutting your profit?
• You have found access to phantom credit accounts on the net. Can
you drain them before anyone notices?
• Some criminals are looking to launder their money and offer you
a cut for your trouble. Can you trust them and, if not, how do you
investigate them without blowing the deal?

Resources
• A rival lets the position of a supply base get out. How much can you
carry?
• A rival is moving a great deal of equipment. Can you hijack the
convoy?
• A scientist announces a new form of technology. Can you make sure
he comes to your company to develop it?

Foundation
• An excellent site becomes available. But it is too expensive. How can
you bring down the neighbourhood and devalue the property?
• A site you have bought turns out to be a haven for drug dealers.
Remove them.
• A war breaks out in a place where you have just bought new
facilities. Can you stop the war, or at least move it away from your
property?
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 A rcane
Arcane missions are often also about taking what you want. But
MISSION SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER TEN

knowledge is the key. You need to send in the scientists and historians to
make sure that what you are after is worth the trouble.

Influence
• You hear rumours of a politician having an affair. Can you find proof
and blackmail him with it?
• A rival is holding hostage the family of an important man. If you can
get them to safety, he may come and work for you.
• An up-and-coming politician looks set to sweep the votes. Can you
find a way to do something for him so he is in your debt when he
takes office?

Secrecy
• A journalist has come across one of your secrets. He only needs a
little proof to go public. Can you keep him quiet? Beware; he may
have planned for his potential demise.
• A sensitive memo gets sent to the wrong e-mail address. But
strangely, nothing seems to come of it. Where did it go and who
read it?
• A rival is hacked and the thieves steal their files on your organisation.
Can you find them first without revealing how damaging what they
may have is for you?

Knowledge
• An old book is up for auction. It looks like a powerful magical tome.
How can you verify this, and make sure your bid wins out?
• A rival corporation has begun digging in Egypt with great fervour.
They seem to have awoken something best left sleeping. Can you see
it buried again?
• A new development unearths an ancient site with several old
carvings on the walls. What do the carvings say and how can you get
control of the site?

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 O pinion
The public is a huge beast. So, these are some of the most difficult

MISSION SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER TEN
missions. Rarely do they yield many points. After all, it is nearly
impossible to convince everyone. Luckily, people can also be as stupid as
they are difficult.

Prestige
• For some reason a rival corporation has suffered a serious loss. No
one knows why. Can you take the credit - and is it safe to do so?
• A new organisation has entered the scene. Can you impress or
intimidate them before they find out the way of things?
• A plan of yours goes horribly wrong. Can you cover up the mistake,
or at least make it look like a rival’s idea?

Façade
• A film about a pig has become really popular. Not knowing how big
it would be, the stars have now been sent to the bacon factory. Can
you save them and let the world know it was you? Can you keep it
quiet that you own the bacon factory?
• A rival is getting a lot of good PR doing charity work. But you have
been doing the same work for longer. How can you make the public
aware of this, but keep quiet about how little you’ve actually done?
• A pressure group uncovers the environmental damage one of your
facilities is doing. However, the files are forgeries planted by a rival
company. Unfortunately, you can’t allow an investigation as that
would reveal the real environmental damage you are doing...

Pressures
• You have inside information on a small but very useful company’s
stock. Can you buy enough for a controlling influence before anyone
else catches on?
• A court case is coming up for a small business. But if they win, the
precedent that is set will badly affect your control in that area. How
can you influence the trial without appearing to get involved?
• A subsidiary is being targeted by a rival. Do you fight for control or
allow them to be taken so they might work for you on the inside? If
they do turn spy, can you trust them?

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 E mploy e e s
These can form some of the oddest missions. Many will involve working
MISSION SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER TEN

inside your own organisation. Getting new teams is often a mixture of

cajoling and extracting, or offering a better deal to the opposition.

Loyalty
• One of your teams has received an offer from a rival. Can you
convince them to stay? Remember the offer may be good and the
rival may protect them.
• A mole inside your staff is spreading rumours that you ‘cancel’ bad
employees. Can you find out who it is, who they work for, what they
know and prove it’s a lie? Much worse if the rumour is true!
• A union rep is stirring up trouble to make a name for himself. He has
pointed out several problems that have damaged worker loyalty. Can
you grant his demands to improve your workers’ conditions without
allowing him to get too powerful by having ‘defeated’ you?

Specialists
• A team is unhappy with their organisation. Can you make them a
better deal, and protect them from the rival?
• A well-known scientist is about to leave his current lab, with his own
team. Everyone wants him. Can you convince him your offer is the
best?
• A team from a rival company has got lost in the jungle. If you can get
them back, maybe they’ll come to work for you.

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 A f t e r wo r d

AFTERWORD
While Cabal is designed as a full game, you will probably find ways to go
into more detail on the workings of your individual company. My goal
with this game is to make something simple that might also be bolted on
to other RPGs. I hope that you find the ideas here useful for your own
games, even if you never actually run them in this format.

You may also understand a lot more about corporate life than me,
and see endless ways to expand Cabal. Even on a mundane scale, the
absurdity of corporate life has kept Dilbert going for years, and shows
no signs of slowing down. Red tape, overpaid consultants, useless middle
management, impossible directives from upper management and surreal
team building exercises are ripe with inspiration for your own Cabal
campaigns.

As you only need a few statistics for your organisation and employees,
I’ve only put basic character sheets in the back of this book. It is hard to
know what space you’ll need for your individual teams and companies
and the small format of the book makes that trickier. But I have created
some playsheets in larger A4 (letter) size, which you can download from
my website at: www.corone.co.uk

You’ll find a link to my e-mail there too, if you have any questions or want
to share with me what you get up to in your games of Cabal. I’d love to
hear where you take your own Cabals and how you make the game your
own.

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 CABAL
RECORD SHEETS

O r ga n i sat i o n R ecord S heet

Name:
Type of organisation:
Mission statement:

A ttri b utes
Logistics Opinion
Finances ____ Prestige ____
Resources ____ Façade ____
Foundation ____ Pressures ____

Arcane Employees
Influence ____ Loyalty ____
Secrecy ____ Specialists ____
Knowledge ____

Specialist Teams:
Total Team Points: ____

Number of Teams: ____

Options bought for each team:

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 CABAL

RECORD SHEETS
E mplo y e e R ec o r d S h e e t
Name:
Employer:
Team name:
Specialist options applied:

Skills:
Root Skills Skills

Equipment: Health Levels

Healthy
Wounds
Incapacitated
Dead

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 Advanced Occupation Skills 52 Example Team Creation 55
Advanced Personal Equipment 52 Executives 4
Advanced Skills 51 Façade 25, 119
Aegis Instrument 85 Façade Vs Secrets 71
INDEX

Afterword 121 Finance 18, 40

Agents (Digital Wage Slaves) 5 Foundation 20, 117
Arcane 13, 17, 33 Gant-Myers-Shotoku Industries 108
Archaeologist 53 General Employee Statistics 46
Armour 63 General Skills (3 team points) 51
Artists 7 Grotius Foundation for Human Rights 94
Attributes in Conflict 33 Guns in close combat 60
Attributes in Depth 17 Hand to Hand 42
Basic Team 51 Hand-to-Hand & Close Combat 59
Biology 43 Health Levels 123
Board of Directors (CEO) 4 Healthy 123
Bonus Finance 70 Heavy Weapons 42
Brotherhood of the Depths 113 Humanities 43
Bullet-proof vest 63 Incapacitated 123
Cabal War 72 Influence 21, 40, 118
Catastrophic Salvation & Salvage, Inc. 76 Interest Skills 51
Chemistry 43 Interns 6
Children of Nicholas 80 Introduction 9
Church of the Arrival 92 Investigator 53
Close Combat 42 Knowledge 23, 118
Combat and Conflict 59 Languages 40
Combat armour 63 Law 41
Combat Skills 42 Leather jacket 63
Computer 40 Logistics 13, 17, 33, 117
Constructing Specialist Teams 51 Losing Attributes 71
Corporate Conflict 31 Low Life 54
Corporate Spy 53 Loyalty 27, 120
Creating your Cabal 11 Magic and Super-science 72
Cyberware 52 Making a Skill Check 37
Dead 123 Medicine 43
Different Starting Points 15 Mission Design 67
Difficulty 29, 30 Mission Suggestions 117
Difficulty Ratings 38 Multiple Attributes 29
Disguise 40 Non-player Characters 70
Dis’kreSHen 96 Occult 41
Doing Damage 61 Occultist 54
Drive 40 Occupation 47
Employee Record Sheet 123 Occupation Packages 51, 53
Employees 13, 17, 35, 45 Operatives (Corporate Raiders) 4
Equipment 49 Opinion 13, 17, 34, 119
Example Cabals 75 Organisation Record Sheet 122
Example Employee Creation 56 Perception 41

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 Personal Equipment 52 The Midsummer Dreamers 104
Physicality 41 The Morphean Order 78
Physics 43 The Octavio Ramirez Society for the
Pilot 41 Preservation of Historical Sites 90

INDEX
Pressures 26, 119 The Opinion Group 24
Prestige 24, 119 The Ordinary Fellows of Smyth 88
Procedure 41 The Sacred Heritage of the Grand
Ranged Combat 59 Magister Solomon Rex 87
Ranged Combat Modifiers 60 The Worshipful Circle of Knitters
Ranged Weapons 42 and Crocheters 110
Resources 19, 117 Toyosato High School 100
Rival Organisations 71 Untrained Employees 49
Root Skills 39 Using Attributes 29
Rumours and lies 102 Websites and Patreons 7
Running the Game 67 Who Goes First? 59
Salisbury Seamstresses and Wounds 123
Tyson Tailors 106 Wound Status 47, 48
Science Skills 43
Scientist 54
Scout 54
Secrecy 22, 118
Security 41
Skill Checks 38
Skills 37
Skills Listing 40
Small Arms 42
Soldier 54
Sources of Inspiration 9
Specialists 28, 120
Specialist Vehicles 52
Stab-proof vest 63
Streetwise 42
Supernatural 42
Survival 42
Team Construction 83, 93
Team Experience 69
Techne 82
The Aegis Instrument 84
The Arcane Group 21
The Brotherhood of the Depths 112
The Chipping Caldron Tidy Towns
Committee 98
The Conspirators 114
The Employees Group 27
The Heritage 86
The Logistics Group 18

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 O t h e r G am es fro m
C o r o ne D esign
CORONE DESIGN

If you enjoyed Cabal, you might be interested in

these other products by Corone Design. You can
find them in the same place you found Cabal,
as well as Lulu Publishing, Indie Press Revolution,
Drivethrurpg and Cubicle 7.

H ellcat s a n d H ock eysti cks

Anarchic adventures at the most dangerous girls’
school ever built

D a nc e o f t h e D amned
A storytelling game of horror and despair based on
Poe’s Masque of the Red Death

P i e S h op
An extremely dark and disturbing game of serial
killers and personal terror.

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 You have an agenda.
Together, you control a powerful organisation;
it might be a company, a conspiracy,
cult or corporation.

You control vast resources over a global

power base. You employ teams of specialists
with very particular skill-sets to further your goals.

What you are willing to do

to achieve these goals,

Well, that’s up to you...

Jeremiah Gutierrez (Order #26536437)