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?
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?