New Campaign for my players - Sharn Film Noir esque - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jancariusseiryujinn Nov 19, 2010 18:01:00	So I've been reading the Dresden novels, and as a direct result, I'm dragging my players to Sharn for a low level 3.5, film noir style game. Party is 5 players, L2, almost all books open. I know where I want the campaign to end up, but I'm not really sure how to get there. It's like I have 5-7 scenes that I want to play out, and no idea how to get the party to them. In essence, I want the initial couple 'cases' to focus on intrigue between the Boromir's and the Cabinet of Faces/Tyrants, or other made up criminal groups in Sharn as neccessary. I also want to provide enough mystery and thought to the cases they get that it's not just "Okay, I roll my solve cases skill, what do I learn?" kind of murder mystery (because that's about as exciting as... something really unexciting). I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas for ways to run this kind of setup? Oh, and 2 of the players this will be their first time in 3.5. They've been in my 4.0 game for a few months, and I asked them if they were interested, and they said yes. The low level of the game, in addition to making it more interesting for me to be able to write credible threats (L1-3 warriors in almost any number are no threat by L9 to most parties, but a straw crossbow bolt can kill low level characters). I also made a couple house rules, just becase there were a few things I preferred from 4.0. Show 3.5 House Rules and Standards Character Creation Characters will be 25 point buy under 3.5 standard point buy rules. Skills Players will have a passive sense motive and passive spot and listen, in essentially identical function to Passive Insight and Passive Perception from 4.0 Death Death occurs from damage when a creature (other than constructs or undead) reaches half it’s max HP in negative, or -10, whichever is greater. When a character is knocked unconscious from damage (-1 to death), they make a saving throw each round with DC= to their negative HP value. On a natural 20, or if they exceed the save DC by 10, they regain consciousness and may take a standard action on that turn. Taking any action deals 1 damage to you. Any damage from an external non-periodic source will return you to unconsciousness (ie, if you are hit by an attack, but not if you having an acid arrow still ticking for damage from before you regained consciousness). Alignment Unintelligent creatures or creatures who have never had free will, such as golems, non-sentient undead, and the like, are always True Neutral, not evil. Spells such as Animate Dead which create mindless undead and do not affect the soul of the corpse affected, no long have the evil descriptor.
#2 accuser Nov 20, 2010 14:55:13	Well, it usually starts with a dame.
#3 GeorgeLanning Nov 22, 2010 10:49:12	Well, it usually starts with a dame. ..in a red dress that left little to my imagination. She breezed into the shabby confines of my office in the Wyvern's Roost like a breath of perfumed air from an overripe garden. I quickly took my boots off the scarred top of my battered desk and put the bottle of Dhakanni rot gut into the lower drawer. She looked to be high class talent from the Firelight district, pretty but fragile like a painted doll that would crumble if you squeezed a little too hard. Dusting off my only other chair with her decorative fan she gathered her skirts about her as she daintly sat and then stared into my eyes deeply before beginning to spin her tale of woe. Oh mister Archer you just have to help me...
#4 jancariusseiryujinn Nov 22, 2010 12:52:35	The hook wasn't the challenging part. Of COURSE it will start with a dame. Whose probably actually working for one of the criminal groups, but is ACTUALLY one of the Lords of Dust, or an Aurum agent, or a dragon The thing is, I can't figure out how to set up the murder mystery part. The party's 'agency' is supposed to be relatively new (they've solved a few cases in backstory), but still a pretty low end outfit as things go... operating out of Lower Dura and all the grit that implies. I think the first person they'll investigate the murder of is a apparently straight (as in not corrupt) guard captain. I want a few clues to point to the Boromirs as the culprits, making it initially seem like he was murdered for refusing one too many bribe and then looking in the right place at the wrong time. Eventually, they'll figure out the captain in question was actually.. less morally upstanding, he just was taking his 'side pay' from a different source, and it was actually disagreement with his real employers that got him killed. I want to have a red herring killer for the Boromirs, and then the real killer. The problem is, I don't really have a good idea how to set this up on a mechanics end, or in such a way that I won't feel super-unsatisfied if they just grab the Boromir guy.
#5 unrulycow Nov 24, 2010 1:47:38	There is actually a lot of tips out there for running a good murder mystery if you search other d&d blogs/forums. The one common feature I picked up is give the players lots of clues and maybe more than one possibe solution. Red herrings may be a bad idea. If the story is overwhemily obvious to you, only then will your players have a chance to put the pieces together.
#6 m4kitsu Nov 26, 2010 4:38:08	There is actually a lot of tips out there for running a good murder mystery if you search other d&d blogs/forums. The one common feature I picked up is give the players lots of clues and maybe more than one possibe solution. Red herrings may be a bad idea. If the story is overwhemily obvious to you, only then will your players have a chance to put the pieces together. ...and if you remember nothing else, remember Chandler's Law: "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." Also, there are some genres of gameplay that I have discovered require a greater willing suspension of disbelief and a greater commitment to genre conventions than others... and dime-novel detective stories are one of them. Make sure your players know the genre conventions and are willing to abide by them. Search around on the forums, there have been some really good threads about this in the past. Hm. Although: In order to prevent a complete shutout risk of them making a guess and grabbing the right guy straight off, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to create a branching structure, of sorts: each witness they question eliminates certain others from suspicion, slowly narrowing the field until only one remains... but have the structure branch in such a way that who the culprit is changes depending on the order of events they choose. That makes it so that (a) they can't really fail, and get to feel smart for "finding" the "right guy" and (b) they can't jump to a conclusion and nab the right guy early, because there is no right guy until the end. It's a dirty trick, but it just might work. This bears further thought... I'll get back to you if I come up with something that works.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

jancariusseiryujinn

Nov 19, 2010 18:01:00

So I've been reading the Dresden novels, and as a direct result, I'm dragging my players to Sharn for a low level 3.5, film noir style game. Party is 5 players, L2, almost all books open.

I know where I want the campaign to end up, but I'm not really sure how to get there. It's like I have 5-7 scenes that I want to play out, and no idea how to get the party to them. In essence, I want the initial couple 'cases' to focus on intrigue between the Boromir's and the Cabinet of Faces/Tyrants, or other made up criminal groups in Sharn as neccessary. I also want to provide enough mystery and thought to the cases they get that it's not just "Okay, I roll my solve cases skill, what do I learn?" kind of murder mystery (because that's about as exciting as... something really unexciting). I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas for ways to run this kind of setup?

Oh, and 2 of the players this will be their first time in 3.5. They've been in my 4.0 game for a few months, and I asked them if they were interested, and they said yes. The low level of the game, in addition to making it more interesting for me to be able to write credible threats (L1-3 warriors in almost any number are no threat by L9 to most parties, but a straw crossbow bolt can kill low level characters). I also made a couple house rules, just becase there were a few things I preferred from 4.0.

Show

3.5 House Rules and Standards
Character Creation
Characters will be 25 point buy under 3.5 standard point buy rules.
Skills
Players will have a passive sense motive and passive spot and listen, in essentially identical function to Passive Insight and Passive Perception from 4.0
Death
Death occurs from damage when a creature (other than constructs or undead) reaches half it’s max HP in negative, or -10, whichever is greater. When a character is knocked unconscious from damage (-1 to death), they make a saving throw each round with DC= to their negative HP value. On a natural 20, or if they exceed the save DC by 10, they regain consciousness and may take a standard action on that turn. Taking any action deals 1 damage to you. Any damage from an external non-periodic source will return you to unconsciousness (ie, if you are hit by an attack, but not if you having an acid arrow still ticking for damage from before you regained consciousness).
Alignment
Unintelligent creatures or creatures who have never had free will, such as golems, non-sentient undead, and the like, are always True Neutral, not evil. Spells such as Animate Dead which create mindless undead and do not affect the soul of the corpse affected, no long have the evil descriptor.

accuser

Nov 20, 2010 14:55:13

Well, it usually starts with a dame.

GeorgeLanning

Nov 22, 2010 10:49:12

Well, it usually starts with a dame.

..in a red dress that left little to my imagination. She breezed into the shabby confines of my office in the Wyvern's Roost like a breath of perfumed air from an overripe garden. I quickly took my boots off the scarred top of my battered desk and put the bottle of Dhakanni rot gut into the lower drawer.

She looked to be high class talent from the Firelight district, pretty but fragile like a painted doll that would crumble if you squeezed a little too hard. Dusting off my only other chair with her decorative fan she gathered her skirts about her as she daintly sat and then stared into my eyes deeply before beginning to spin her tale of woe.

Oh mister Archer you just have to help me...

jancariusseiryujinn

Nov 22, 2010 12:52:35

The hook wasn't the challenging part. Of COURSE it will start with a dame. Whose probably actually working for one of the criminal groups, but is ACTUALLY one of the Lords of Dust, or an Aurum agent, or a dragon

The thing is, I can't figure out how to set up the murder mystery part. The party's 'agency' is supposed to be relatively new (they've solved a few cases in backstory), but still a pretty low end outfit as things go... operating out of Lower Dura and all the grit that implies. I think the first person they'll investigate the murder of is a apparently straight (as in not corrupt) guard captain. I want a few clues to point to the Boromirs as the culprits, making it initially seem like he was murdered for refusing one too many bribe and then looking in the right place at the wrong time. Eventually, they'll figure out the captain in question was actually.. less morally upstanding, he just was taking his
'side pay' from a different source, and it was actually disagreement with his real employers that got him killed. I want to have a red herring killer for the Boromirs, and then the real killer. The problem is, I don't really have a good idea how to set this up on a mechanics end, or in such a way that I won't feel super-unsatisfied if they just grab the Boromir guy.

unrulycow

Nov 24, 2010 1:47:38

There is actually a lot of tips out there for running a good murder mystery if you search other d&d blogs/forums. The one common feature I picked up is give the players lots of clues and maybe more than one possibe solution. Red herrings may be a bad idea. If the story is overwhemily obvious to you, only then will your players have a chance to put the pieces together.

m4kitsu

Nov 26, 2010 4:38:08

There is actually a lot of tips out there for running a good murder mystery if you search other d&d blogs/forums. The one common feature I picked up is give the players lots of clues and maybe more than one possibe solution. Red herrings may be a bad idea. If the story is overwhemily obvious to you, only then will your players have a chance to put the pieces together.

...and if you remember nothing else, remember Chandler's Law:

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."

Also, there are some genres of gameplay that I have discovered require a greater willing suspension of disbelief and a greater commitment to genre conventions than others... and dime-novel detective stories are one of them. Make sure your players know the genre conventions and are willing to abide by them.

Search around on the forums, there have been some really good threads about this in the past.

Hm.

Although:

In order to prevent a complete shutout risk of them making a guess and grabbing the right guy straight off, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to create a branching structure, of sorts: each witness they question eliminates certain others from suspicion, slowly narrowing the field until only one remains... but have the structure branch in such a way that who the culprit is changes depending on the order of events they choose.

That makes it so that (a) they can't really fail, and get to feel smart for "finding" the "right guy" and (b) they can't jump to a conclusion and nab the right guy early, because there is no right guy until the end.

It's a dirty trick, but it just might work. This bears further thought... I'll get back to you if I come up with something that works.