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View Full Version : Help me work out some encounters/story structure? Stealthy infiltration, modern city



Eldan
2021-01-31, 01:55 PM
So, let's try to keep this brief. A lot of the details aren't yet worked out anyway, so that saves time.

We have a modern urban fantasy game. There's magic and various magical creatures in the world. (Ruleset is Dresden Files Accelerated without the Dresden Files world). The players loosely belong to a secret religious-mystical organisation based out of Malta that is mainly trying to research and contain various major magical threats, especially various old gods from reincarnating. For that, they are regularly globetrotting to various cities where weird magical things have recently happened or are in the process of happening.
The characters are an Italian artist who happens to be the current avatar of the Greek God Aiolos, a deeply eccentric and occasionaly abrasive Jewish mystic, a former FBI profiler who swore a magical oath to protect civilization from wild magic and gains power from that and a several-centuries old alchemist. They are as a whole scarily good at ritual magic.

Foor their next adventure, they are going to repay a favour they owe to some other organisation by engaging in a heist. They need to steal the skull of a famous pirate from a museum. The thing is, that skull will be needed as a ritual ingredient, so it must be stolen in a symbolic way. They need to be both secretive and daring, that's a stipulation of the contract. "Piratical", is how they will put it.

I'm still working out how the city the museum is in will exactly look magically, but it's going to be loosely based on Hamburg (stealing from Yora's Vampire thread in Worldbuilding here.) I'm going to put several magical organisations in the city that are at low-scale war. Likely vampires, magically empowered criminals and a few old wizards who are also seacaptains and merchants.

Now. The museum heist is going to be relatively easy for me to work out, I've done similar things before. But I need a bit more challenge to pad this out. So I'm thinking that, under the "secretive" stipulation, the players will have to make their way into the city without being seen or recognized by the local powers. A bit of stealth action, so to speak.

And here I'm running into problems. This is a large modern city. The characters look like perfectly ordinary humans, as long as they don't decide to ship a few golems in crates with them or summon a thunderstorm to announce their arrival.

So, what I'm looking for is ideas: how would a relatively small group of magical creatures that also don't like each other keep tabs on an entire city, or at least the relevant parts of it, and how would they be able to tell if some new magical talents arrive in the city? I don't just want to make it some kind of city-wide scrying spell, that would feel gimicky. Unless the players can be warned of that ahead of time and prepare in some way.

Also, what else could the players encounter in the city and how could they avoid being found in a "piratical" way?

Any ideas?

Palanan
2021-01-31, 09:06 PM
Originally Posted by Eldan
So, what I'm looking for is ideas: how would a relatively small group of magical creatures that also don't like each other keep tabs on an entire city, or at least the relevant parts of it, and how would they be able to tell if some new magical talents arrive in the city?

My first thought is that they're watching through the eyes of crows.

I don't know anything about the Dresden rules, but in 3.5 there's the Chain of Eyes spell, which allows you to see through the eyes of another creature, and to shift perspective to any other creature it touches. If there's a way you can adapt that, then your magical creatures can spy on each other through the eyes of crows, and/or other animals in the city. Depending on the city, there might be owls or falcons who have adapted to the urban environment; those would be good choices as well.

Eldan
2021-02-01, 03:15 AM
It's a version of FATE. Meaning rules are very narrative and open-ended. For something like that, you could literally just write "this character can see through crows" on the sheet. Or make it a ritual, for a ritual, you just say what you want it to do and the DM says if it works.

So, I think that's a good idea. THough I think it might also be hilarious if it was pigeons... the idea of a vampire bonded to pigeons isntead of bats just amuses me.

Lacco
2021-02-01, 05:29 AM
Just a longshot, since I have no idea what Dresden Files are - and especially how they deal with magic + technology issue, but what about cell sites? You know, transmitters.

Hamburg has a good coverage, there is also a map of cell sites - can send you a link - but if I were part of this cabal, I'd go for enchanting every one of those to detect magic users through their own cell phones.

The players can lose the cellphones or work around it - and it would be a known fact there is something wrong in certain circles (because you just can't go around messing with several hundreds of towers without magical society knowing something is up...).

If there is a small, but dedicated group that can bind together magic & technology, it could work. Even if there are several groups that do not like each other, they could cooperate to create something like that to scare off newcomers.

Other possibilities: vampire thralls at each hotel reception. A cabal of landlords that keeps notice of everybody that rents a building. A set of magic-detecting gargoyles on each church?

But when you want to do something like this on a relatively large scale, you need to think with chokepoints. Gates, arches and bridges. There are few bridges in Hamburg - according to the map - which is good. You can, of course, avoid the bridges, but if you pass over one, not wielding a local thingamajig that tells the spell inscribed on the bridge to not work, you are detected. PING.

My other idea would be parking lots in the area around the area the cabal wants to protect.

Eldan
2021-02-01, 06:13 AM
Ruleswise, it's just a relatively open-ended narrative framework for urban fantasy, where players have magic powers and fight other magical people or monsters. All my players made their own magical power sources and classes, for example, it's relatively easy.

I do like the ideas of bridges and cell phone towers. Ideally, I want things that are avoidable with some preparation, not too easy or entirely all-encompassing. So ideas like "You can't use cell phones while in the city, they will detect your magic via technomancy" and "you may only cross bridges while doing X, or you will have consequence Y" are good.

Hm. Given that I was thinking of making magical criminals, I might have them working with some kind of bridge guardian. Not a full-on troll, maybe, but some kind of fey/kobold spirit that guards bridges. Then it becomes "toss a coin over the railing every time you cross a bridge, or your magic is weakened for the day and they may alarm your rivals" or something along those lines.

That gives me three basic ideas. I can have the rich wizards own a cellphone company, the magical criminals control the bridges and the local vampire lord see through birds. That's a pretty good start.