I ended up running NBA last week for my group, to good success.  I'm not totally pleased with the results, but much of that is either due to a) me using a system that's drastically different than what I'm used to, and b) some GM rust.

Plot Summary: I began the game in media res, with the PCs just having escaped The Conspiracy and discovered that vampires exist.  We had a WHO biologist, an NSA ECHELON tech (who no-showed for the first game), a Parisian cat-burglar, an Italian smuggler/getaway driver, a British MI-6 agent, retired, and finally a member of a Russian version of the TREADSTONE conspiracy from the Bourne novels, which let me use Black Dolphin prison and a modern version of the Sharazhka system, now buried in the Russian prison system.

As the players tried to figure out the extent of the conspiracy, they ended up tying the Parisian head of the conspiracy to the Affair of the Poisons (look it up on Wiki) and the conspiracy's main representative to be the real Eustache Darger de Cavoye. They realized that this guy was the real Eustache Darger right after sending a team after him, so it was fun to watch them realize that "Oh, my God, this man is a few hundred years old, abort!"

The climactic scene was the PCs trying to interrogate a member of the Russian TREADSTONE equivalent while he was being used as a puppet by Eustache Darger.  Darger offered to clear the books on the PCs and call off the dogs if they stole a laptop from a NATO general (see the (S)entries adventure from the core rulebook.)

My real complaints are two-fold: One, I really want to run this as a horror/thriller game, and I was too busy learning GUMSHOE to really focus on the horror and Stability checks.  Two, as simple as NBA looks, to really, really pull it off, you need to be really familiar with the GM section, and as simple as a Conspyramid looks on paper, they're not so easy to come up with.  OTOH, once you have a rough idea of a city and the power-players in it, it's totally a sandbox adventure where the players can wander about, grabbing core clues and figuring out how everybody fits and then being pro-active about taking them down.  I almost think the Conspyramid should be location based, rather than elements of the conspiracy based.

Anyway, really enjoyed it, looking forward to game two, as are my players.

Ok, took a left turn...

Is GUMSHOE the system? I assumed it was a Vampire campaign...

Quote from: Novastar;629308Ok, took a left turn...

Is GUMSHOE the system? I assumed it was a Vampire campaign...

In a nutshell, GUMSHOE is the system, the same system used for Esoterrorists, Trail of Cthulhu, Mutant City Blues and Ashen Stars, but for NBA it's been fine-tuned for espionage action, so there are chase rules, "thriller" mods to the combat rules to allow you to do stunts from modern action movies and books, etc.  

The sell-line for NBA is "The Bourne movies if TREADSTONE was filled with vampires." PCs play ex-spies, mercenaries, and criminals who discover the vampiric conspiracy.  The game has rules for making each vampiric conspiracy unique, from building your own vampires and their special powers and minions to designing the shape of the conspiracy.  (Here's a link to the three contest winners for the conspyramid contest -- it shows how different each conspiracy can be, and the rules give examples of even more disparate examples, like cell-based conspiracies, etc.)

It's by Kenneth Hite, who did the old Suppressed Transmission columns in Pyramid and numerous games since.  

So far, I'm having fun with it, but like I said, my next task will be building up a sense of dread and horror.

Ken's a good guy, though he suffered under a "fan club" at every Convention I've ever seen him at. Notably at the urinal, at one ConQuest (2 guys followed him into the john; wins my "creepiest moment at a Convention" award, and I was just a (vocal) bystander).

I'll need to give GUMSHOE a better look-see.

My group is having fun with NBA.  We ran through Sentries and then followed up with some original scenarios.  Our GM is considering running us through The Zalozhniy Quartet at some point in the future.

  I think he put up an actual play report on Sentries somewhere on TBP: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?671672-Anyone-currently-running-Night-s-Black-Agents&p=16344249#post16344249

Quote from: fellowhoodlum;629746My group is having fun with NBA.  We ran through Sentries and then followed up with some original scenarios.  Our GM is considering running us through The Zalozhniy Quartet at some point in the future.

  I think he put up an actual play report on Sentries somewhere on TBP: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?671672-Anyone-currently-running-Night-s-Black-Agents&p=16344249#post16344249

Nice.  We're running through (S)entries now, and the PCs have managed to focus so hard on stealing Lennart's laptop that they're treating the drop with Dedopovic as an afterthought, which...may cause problems.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;631931Nice.  We're running through (S)entries now, and the PCs have managed to focus so hard on stealing Lennart's laptop that they're treating the drop with Dedopovic as an afterthought, which...may cause problems.

Are they at least the heavily armed sorts who could fight their way out of an ambush?

(Still haven't read through the scenario despite completing it)

Yeah, somehow I'm getting the idea their just going to waltz up to their contact to hand him the package, then hear the slide of 6 AK-47's being pulled, in a rough semi-circle around them, and then collectively go "Aww, fuck."...