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wayfare
2010-09-28, 02:42 PM
So, D&D meets CSI.

I actually want to run this.

The players will all be members of the elite city guard, and will be tasked with maintaining justice in a massive city (100,000 inhabitants). They only deal with high level crimes, such as: Murders, Grand Theft, Cases of Domination, Misuse of Magic, etc.

The system is not straight D&D, so I'm not looking for monsters, just plot ideas.

Any takers?

Stegyre
2010-09-28, 03:33 PM
Murder is always a good one, and for source ideas, may I suggest some old ballads, such as
Mary Hamilton (http://www.metrolyrics.com/mary-hamilton-lyrics-joan-baez.html) (the Joan Baez version, but a simple internet search will get you the Child Ballad versions)
Bonny Swans (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Bonny-Swans-lyrics-Loreena-McKennitt/A2C3DB046598451848256BDC000FCE0A) (Loreena McKennit version; again, you can find others)

Both of these are nice for the possibility of high-level intrigue as you expand slightly on the stories. One campaign idea I had (based on Bonny Swans) is that the younger (murdered) daughter's marriage was also for an important political alliance -- how will the investigator characters deal with the fact that the guilty party (the only surviving princess) is now also the only way to make that pact go forward? Mayhap, for this reason, powerful forces in the Court do not want the truth, etc.

Good luck. :smallsmile:

Fax Celestis
2010-09-28, 03:43 PM
Take a page from Porcupine Tree (http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/porcupinetree/stupiddream.html#1).

hamishspence
2010-09-28, 04:18 PM
This thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=168629

mentions a very similar concept- party are crime investigators.

BRC
2010-09-28, 04:21 PM
There was a very in-depth community world building project, Ishka, that would be more or less perfect for this. Here's the Wiki (http://ishka.wikispaces.com/) and Here is the original thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120354) if you've got a couple days to wade through it.

wayfare
2010-09-28, 10:01 PM
Thanks for the suggestions, guys! Y'all are great!

A couple of the ideas that I'm working with:

1) Crazed mage polymorphs his victims to swine and sells them at a local meat cart.

2) PCs are on the trail of a hot-shot assassin, their only lead is a frail waif who survived the beast's predations. Turns out, said frail waif is the assassin and is turning the PCs on to her rivals.

3) A trio of illusionist triplets wreak havok on the justice system by staging public crimes while their siblings are captured.

4) Priest sells curative magic that only suppresses diseases, requiring his flock to pay multiple times for treatment.

5) A sinister "murder club" draws the city's shadier nobility -- each member tries to kill their targets in the most creative way possible, and are awarded points based on:

a) How elaborate the kill was
b) How dangerous the prey way
c) How high-profile the prey was
d) How easily they evaded police

6) A serial killer turns himself in, but claims that he was the victim of possession. His killings start again while he is in custody -- does he have an accomplice, or is a demon stalking the streets.

Critiques and ideas are welcome!

--Wayfare

yaklin
2010-09-28, 10:19 PM
how's this idea: a mage is going around stunning/charming/immobilizing/whatever attractive females and then raping them, the party then has to find and bring the rapist to justice either peacefully or violently.

doc*sk
2010-09-28, 10:33 PM
I have also been thinking about a city guard campaign. I was thinking about focusing some on the wizard side. Perhaps your characters could be part of some sort of Magic or Arcane Guard. They will have to master counterspells and dispels to be of use. They will need to be able to track down magic. Depending on their methods, they might have to subdue powerful wizards.

They would have a powerful arsenal of items. I think that a great quartermaster npc could be fun.

Draco Ignifer
2010-09-28, 10:37 PM
I'm just curious as to how you're going to keep the plot from being ruined by divination spells, speak to dead, and any of the other ways that players have solving mysteries way too easily.

wayfare
2010-09-28, 11:25 PM
I'm just curious as to how you're going to keep the plot from being ruined by divination spells, speak to dead, and any of the other ways that players have solving mysteries way too easily.

I like the D&DSI: Special Victims Unit idea

As for the magic thing, the system I am using is a heavily modified version of d20 modern. All the players and most of the antagonists are going to stick with the 6 base classes for the first section of the game.

So, those characters that get magic, won't really be able to pull off super divinations that break the game. Furthermore, all of the mage classes are restricted to super-specific specialization. If you want to be a Diviner, you can only learn up to level 2 spells in any other school and can't learn the opposition school at all (Conjuration, I think). So, if the players are willing to abide by these restrictions, then damn -- they deserve to be able to break the game.

Clerics are a bit trickier, as they have a plethora of ways to handle these sorts of situations (detect lies, necromancy, etc). My way of dealing with that is to sit down with the player and choose the spell list granted by their god -- the player can only cast those spells. If they can make a good case for it, it gets in. Otherwise, seeya.

Finally, no amount of divination can get past faulty perception. An assassin under "change self" will still fool many divinations. Ask a corpse who killed it and you still get bad info.

Tyrmatt
2010-09-29, 07:24 AM
Grave-robbing is always a good one, particularly if it looks like the dead are rising to kill their families or people who wronged them beforehand. Of course, it's probably some inventive necromancer who's essentially using the bodies as disposable hitmen. Plus they foil divination as since they are definitely dead, they can't be scryed upon by name or knowing them.

There's a lot of Eberron stuff as well that would probably be easily adapted to this idea Possibly look into that.

I believe you should also include a Lieutenant NPC who gives them all their cases.
EDIT: Whoops just visited the URL to hear the CSI YEAAAH and it popped a malware warning. Link removed.

wayfare
2010-09-29, 07:55 AM
Grave-robbing is always a good one, particularly if it looks like the dead are rising to kill their families or people who wronged them beforehand. Of course, it's probably some inventive necromancer who's essentially using the bodies as disposable hitmen. Plus they foil divination as since they are definitely dead, they can't be scryed upon by name or knowing them.

There's a lot of Eberron stuff as well that would probably be easily adapted to this idea Possibly look into that.

I believe you should also include a Lieutenant NPC who gives them all their cases.
EDIT: Whoops just visited the URL to hear the CSI YEAAAH and it popped a malware warning. Link removed.

Your username = awesomeness.

And the idea is pretty great too! Thanks, guys, for all the help!

herrhauptmann
2010-09-29, 09:27 AM
Some of the best stuff in the world is cribbed from other sources, so why not use the movie Fallen?

edit: Forgot link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119099/

valadil
2010-09-29, 09:54 AM
If you want to make things difficult run multiple similar cases at once and make it hard to figure out which clues belong to which cases. Also make sure that the NPCs they talk to are not perfect sources of information. An NPC can repeat a lie they were told without actually lying.

Saintheart
2010-09-29, 10:07 AM
Here's a thought: normally a Hallow effect with Zone of Truth applies during proceedings before the city's judges. But then a big crim gets off a charge because the Zone of Truth spell was subverted or suborned somehow (portable antimagic field device maybe?) and the CSI team has to track it down and recover/destroy it before it puts the entire judicial system in the city in peril.