Sleepless Agency and freeform mystery campaign

[Mapleaxe]

Background: I’m thinking of running a campaign where all of the players are novice field agents for the Sleepless Agency assigned to Absalom. Taking some inspiration from Masks of Nyarlathotep, I’m planning on having my players uncover a cache of clues left by another agent who’s gone missing that could potentially lead them to a number of different locations/adventure opportunities and let them choose which ones to follow. I’m not planning on figuring out too much specifically about where the clues lead at this point beyond some general concepts (e.g. Osirion tomb, mountain excavation site, wizard’s tower, etc.), so that I can scale the adventures for whatever level they happen to be at when (or if) they follow that lead. 

Had a few questions for you all:

1) Beyond Rule of Fear, Pathfinder #110 “The Thrushmoor Terror”, and the Sleepless Detective prestige class in Paths of Prestige, is there any more published  information on the Sleepless Agency?

2) If my players all work for the Agency, presumably they get some sort of stipend or per diem. What would be a reasonable amount to give them?

3) Also, if they work for the Sleepless Agency, what sort of other resources would they reasonably have access to? I figure they may be able to call in help from other agents occasionally, but I don’t want to make this available too often. I don’t see the Agency having other permanent offices outside of the Sleepless Building in Thrushmoor, so i don't see them having access to something like that. I'm thinking of giving them an intermediate supervisor so they aren't reporting directly to Cesadia Wrentz, at least at first.

4) At first, I thought it might be fun to given them the clues in the form of a crazy conspiracy string board left by their missing colleague (inaccurate and incomplete, of course), but the more I think about it, laying out a bunch of the connections between the clues for the players right at the start feels like i'm giving them too much. Opinions?

[Perpdepog]

1. As far as I know there are only a couple of archetypes that reference the Sleepless Agency, mostly for the investigator. A shock, I know, heh. I know of this one and ... actually that's all. I thought there was another but looking it up now it is a Lepidstadt Investigator, not a Sleepless one. I imagine the two groups have some overlap, but just as much rivalry.

2. It should be enough to make living less of a hassle, but not so much that the party starts dragging their feet to rake in a bigger paycheck, though I imagine their overseer would frown on dragging down the reputation of the organization like that. I might say something around 2 to 5 gold per day. Enough to be good pay and afford nice meals but not enough to bankroll major purchases like magic items, unless that is what you want them to do.

3. As for resources, the Sleepless Agency seems like the kind of organization who banks a lot off their reputation and street cred. You could lend them help more in the form of information than actual material goods. Maybe someone who hired them before is favorably disposed and offers advice, or they can ask around in places not normally available.

4. How long do you want this mystery to be? If it's supposed to drag on for a while then I think something like scattered, ranting scribbles on the walls or maybe torn fragments of journal pages would be more appropriate. They are dealing with the Crawling Chaos, Haunter in the Dark and the Faceless Sphynx, after all.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

2. I suggest abusing the Income Earned table (Table 4-2) on page 236 by giving them the rightmost column's amount for their level per day. That'd start at 2 sp/day for 1st level and go up to 200 gp/day at 20th.

4. Don't go overboard on inaccurate clues; players will generally come up with all sorts of wildly inaccurate theories even from accurate clues, as long as those aren't too precise.

[Mapleaxe]

Thanks for the advice. Note, they won't actually be dealing with Nyarlathotep, my reference to Masks is more about the way that that classic Call of Cthulhu campaign kicks off where in the first session the players get five or six clues which could send them off in about as many different directions (Harlem, London, Shanghai, Cairo, etc.) but doesn't tell them which way to go first.

Perpdepog wrote:

1. As far as I know there are only a couple of archetypes that reference the Sleepless Agency, mostly for the investigator. A shock, I know, heh. I know of this one and ... actually that's all. I thought there was another but looking it up now it is a Lepidstadt Investigator, not a Sleepless one. I imagine the two groups have some overlap, but just as much rivalry.

2. It should be enough to make living less of a hassle, but not so much that the party starts dragging their feet to rake in a bigger paycheck, though I imagine their overseer would frown on dragging down the reputation of the organization like that. I might say something around 2 to 5 gold per day. Enough to be good pay and afford nice meals but not enough to bankroll major purchases like magic items, unless that is what you want them to do.

3. As for resources, the Sleepless Agency seems like the kind of organization who banks a lot off their reputation and street cred. You could lend them help more in the form of information than actual material goods. Maybe someone who hired them before is favorably disposed and offers advice, or they can ask around in places not normally available.

4. How long do you want this mystery to be? If it's supposed to drag on for a while then I think something like scattered, ranting scribbles on the walls or maybe torn fragments of journal pages would be more appropriate. They are dealing with the Crawling Chaos, Haunter in the Dark and the Faceless Sphynx, after all.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Something else to bear in mind is that the Sleepless Agency draws a lot of inspiration from the infamous real-world detective agency the Pinkertons.