Bureau 13


Bureau 13 is a role-playing game series, named after a fictional top-secret government agency which investigates and combats supernatural events. The Bureau's motto is "Protecting America from Everything". Stalking the Night Fantastic is a Bureau 13 horror game released by Tri Tac Games in 1983.
In 1991, the Bureau 13 series won the Gamers Choice Award at Gencon for best Fantasy Game. In 2008 a new d20 Modern edition was released. The series has a definite tongue in cheek attitude that is emphasized by both the background stories and the illustrations.

Background

Bureau 13 was founded in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln to deal with supernatural and paranormal threats to the Union. Its first agents were a motley crew of military personnel, Pinkerton detectives, civilian consultants, freed slaves, paroled criminals, and even Confederate prisoners of war.
After the Civil War, the Bureau had access to a large budget and limitless resources. Safe houses and caches of equipment were stockpiled across the country. The headquarters in Washington, D.C., later became the East Coast office. A West Coast office was created in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, to speed up response times to threats on the frontier. After the Indian Wars and the settling of the West, Bureau 13 began to face threats outside the jurisdiction of the United States, and so the Bureau's agents served during World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.
On 7 July 1977, an attack destroyed the Bureau 13 headquarters and killed hundreds of agents. This was later dubbed the "'77 Massacre". This shattered the organization. Scattered groups of survivors took years to re-form. The remaining agents decided to go underground as a cell-based network. Gradually they began to create networks of "friendlies" - assets and sympathizers that would help the Bureau when called upon. As the number of original agents retired or died, the "friendlies" started to be promoted to agent status. Most agents encountered are usually civilians who received their training on the job.
The job of Bureau 13 is as it has always been. Investigate the strange or unusual, analyze the evidence to see if there is a supernatural or paranormal cause, and assess whether the cause is hostile or dangerous.

Role-play style

Bureau 13 tends to have a weird, humorous or satirical bent to it. Another factor is that the characters are usually mundane civilians rather than commandos or Men In Black. They don't usually have a lot of military or espionage skills.

Current games

;Bureau 13
has published five novels set in the Bureau 13 universe:
published a video game based on the role-playing game in 1995. Depending on which agents the player picked and how they handled people they encountered, the mission would go differently.