Smoke and Mirrors: Mechanics

Infiltration

Although people know that something might not be completely right with the world, you're still illegal and working in the shadows. Therefore to get anything done, you must infiltrate organs of government or corporations to ensure that you are not exposed and killed off, whether by the people you wish to save or by your enemies when you are made vulnerable. Infiltration allows you to manipulate the organs of government in your favor. Beware, other groups can do the same. Each infiltration score goes from 0 to 10, where 0 means you have no contacts in that group and 10 means you have a significant presence inside that allows you to basically do what you want as long as you don't do anything too crazy.

Judicial Infiltration

Judicial Infiltration represents how well you can bend the law to your will. When discovered committing a crime (and you will be committing crimes, lots of them), Judicial Infiltration can get an agent out of jail, or keep them from ever seeing trial. Furthermore, having access to police assets makes information-gathering much, much easier, and makes it easier to siphon off promising detectives and human intelligence sources.

Military Infiltration

Military Infiltration allows superior access to replacement combat agents, as well as access to heavier weapons and equipment. Furthermore military infiltration also assists in botched operations because if you have feelers and moles inside their command chain the chances are that special ops commando team they dispatched to hunt you down is busy kicking down doors on the other side of the world, chasing red herrings.

Media Infiltration

Media infiltration lets you cover up your actions by having someone "debunk" them, printing them in tabloids so outrageous people reject the truth, or just plain releasing an official-looking press release that gives a plausible explanation for everything happening. People fundamentally want to believe everything is all right, and media manipulation allows you to keep that veil.

Fronts

Similarly, front companies can be very useful in many ways. Front companies are run by your compact, and generally do not know what their upper management really does. However, they are an excellent source of resources, especially legal income. Each front company you purchase generates 30 income for your cause, which can be used as you see fit. However, this being legal income, it has a significant paper trail and can only be safely used in legal outlets (defense fees, medical care, some types of hardware purchases and maintenance, etc). It can be used for illegal purchases but that always comes with a risk.

Infrastructure

Even hidden compacts need to have their own facilities to build what they cannot easily acquire. The three basic types of infrastructure are Illegal Income, Production, and Personnel. Furthermore all organizations have a organization-specific type of Infrastructure that allows them to build certain items that are exclusive to them.

Illegal Income

Sometimes you need money that does not leave a paper or electronic trail. This is necessary for purchasing black market material, paying people who shouldn't exist, funding local terrorist groups, and other acts that would leave a red flag in your bank accounts normally. Illegal income is safe to use in any situation, insofar as buying illegal weapons or funding terrorism or putting out hits can be "safe".

Production

Production is used to build things you need built that you really, really don't want to buy openly, like IEDs, anti-tank satchel charges, silver bullets, assault cannons, and things that generally would arouse at least some suspicion. Most compacts will not have sufficient production to construct anything particularly large very often, but it'll likely be enough to arm a few groups.

Producing illegal items is often safer than buying them on the black market, and having very little of it makes it difficult to acquire the gear necessary to hunt down the menaces that lurk in the dark without bringing up flags. For the enemy, too, can use many of the tactics you do.

Manpower

Personnel are men and women who know about the compact and are capable of assisting it. Your personnel pool is where you recruit spies, saboteurs, and soldiers from to fight in this invisible war. A compact may have access to much more manpower than just the personnel pool, but the pool represents people who know at least something of what waits in the night and their enemies.

Special

All archetypes have a differing special infrastructure type that represents their ability to make use of their exclusive equipment or capabilities. Although expensive, without this equipment you will generally be outclassed by foes who do use occult rituals and foul arcanotechnologies to enhance their agents. Be aware that at least for some groups, they require production capacity alongside their special infrastructure to make use of it.

Stealth

Large conspiracies are harder to hide. The stealth rating maxes out at 100, in which case you are completely invisible. At 0, you have gone public, and that means bad, bad, bad things are going to happen. The higher your stealth rating the easier time you will have furthering your infiltration, weaseling out of negative consequences, and spending time fighting the enemy instead of the judicial system.

Stealth Ratings Explained

0: You have gone public. You probably have a web site dedicated to your mission statement and how you will proceed about making humanity safe. Your main headquarters is visible on Google Maps. This is not a good thing. Every cult is now gunning for you. Expect to either have to abandon everything and go to ground, or get wiped out, before the end of the week.
1-20: Everyone knows you exist, they just don't know the specifics and what you're up to. Like Delta Force or SEAL Team 6, your name is fairly recognizable in the public. The enemy knows quite a bit about you. Expect constant harassment by cultists armed with AKs and RPGs.
21-40: The intelligence community and people who do a lot of fact-finding know you exist. Everyone else goes "wha-?" when your group's name is said. Your enemy knows about you though, and perhaps has enough data to strike back at you from time to time.
41-60: Only a few very observant, intelligent people with a lot of data at their hands know you exist, and they only know vague details. Your enemy knows enough about you to plan against you, but they can't find you to counterattack easily if at all.
61-80: The only ones who know you exist are your enemy and other groups that have long-time contact, whether friendly or adversarial. And even then they blame half the stuff you do on other groups.
81-99: Not even your enemy knows you exist, your tracks are covered that well. Friendly contacts tend to believe they're dealing with a handful of people, not an organization. Stuff you do is blamed on other meddling conspiracies.
100: Even YOU don't know you exist. Of course there are some philosophical questions you need to ask at this point.

Knowledge

Not all groups have similar aptitudes. In Smoke and Mirrors, there are five basic group aptitudes, rated from 0 (base) to 5 (incredible). Aptitudes are relatively versatile but only provide moderate boosts to abilities in their areas.

Tactics: Tactics is how well you do when you're kicking down doors and hitting things in the face, whether they be a bunch of cultists armed with AKs and RPGs, or the spawn of an Elder God. Although this is useful, one caveat is that kicking down a door is going to draw a lot of negative attention, and any type of attention is bad attention.

Assassination: An entirely different aptitude, assassination improves your ability to eliminate single targets in covert operations. Because why take on that Elder God with small arms when you can shoot the guy who plans to summon it before it happens?

Negotiation: Negotiation makes buying things less costly and also is vital for convincing people that you don't exist. This can represent charisma, or just a hell of a lot of blackmail material available on everyone.

Streetwise: The mundane equivalent of Occult, Streetwise is a knowledge of who to talk to, which black market dealer sells what and how to get them to sell you what you need, who has the juiciest rumors, who's reliable and who's not...

Occult: Occult is critical for outplanning and outguessing the enemy.