Caper Games part II
Jan. 27th, 2010 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
subplotkudzuAfter I sent out the "invitation" (i.e. the objective for next session) there was roughly two weeks of on and off e-mail discussion between the players. Some of this was expected - they decided to fake Schiffren's death, for example - but some of it was not.
Tom and Jim spent considerable effort figuring out how to make the death realistic and protect Schiffren _after_ the faked death. They looked into securing a replacement corpse, scouted out escape routes through the sewers and constructed some anti-scrying devices (and one that would attract divinations on Schiffren to the corpse) in case the Prussians called in a magician.
Meanwhile Diane, Rachel and Heather located where Tarkmann was staying, scouted it out, confirmed Liserl's location there and constructed a dummy infernal device (it's a poison injector that has to be wound every 8 hours or it will spring and kill the wearer).
In other words the players were following two different paths (fake the death vs. rescue the girl) while neither were planning anything to make Schiffren's death _believable_ to the Prussians before hand. That sort of thing is critical in the source material, but they weren't pursuing it. I was forced to step in and point this out, with a follow up question as to whether their plan was to fake the death first and then have a cunning plan to direct Tarkmann's inevitable investigation to convince him that this wasn't a suicide or a faked death. That too would have been a perfectly valid, but it hadn't occurred to them.
This is one of my main concerns about the game as a whole - making sure the players understand both the demands of the caper genre and exactly how much the team can get away with when dealing with an unsuspecting mark. I want to avoid them glossing over some things (like the need to prime the mark into a certain mode of thinking) while preventing them from worrying endlessly about being immediately suspected. Players, knowing that they are the centers of the plot in most games, and the ones who have other people con and betray them all too often in published modules, have a tendency to be far more suspicious of everyone they meet then any normal person. In a caper game the players have to realize that _they_ are the ones doing the con and that the targets _aren't_ used to years of plots where their boss betrays them or their guy selling the treasure map is actually a a mind flayer with Hat of Disguise. (Besides, if the mark is someone who is naturally suspicious you just have to convince them that they're forcing you to do what you want.) this unlearning can be painful.
In any event, with this warning they put forward the plan of Jim and Rachel's characters (the face man and the eye candy, respectively) taking the identity of an Inspectorate officer and his wife who, while at the sale salon with Tarkmann (Rachel's research had already opened up a believable path to that) would let slip to Tarkmann that her husband was investigating a possible Prussian informant at the ministry of advanced technology. Jim's character and Heathers (the party Faerie, wearing a seeming of a burly Inspectorate agent) would therefore not be out of place trying to arrest Schiffren just after the first information drop (they have confirmed that the first round of information was a test, or at least did not contain critical data). Diane's engineer and Tom's military magician built the specially exploding steam carriage and the escape path that would have it crash right over the weakened sewer grate.
As a back up plan, Diane and Heather were to sneak into Tarkmann's HQ and replace Liserl's device with the dummy, so they would have some protection if the main plan went awry. In a lot of ways this was entirely unnecessary - more of a risk than an advantage - but it did give Heather and Diane more to do in the session. It wouldn't have appeared in the TV show, but it worked very well at the table.
The seemed like a good enough plan. The play at the table, and the Cards, said differently. But that's for tomorrow.
Tom and Jim spent considerable effort figuring out how to make the death realistic and protect Schiffren _after_ the faked death. They looked into securing a replacement corpse, scouted out escape routes through the sewers and constructed some anti-scrying devices (and one that would attract divinations on Schiffren to the corpse) in case the Prussians called in a magician.
Meanwhile Diane, Rachel and Heather located where Tarkmann was staying, scouted it out, confirmed Liserl's location there and constructed a dummy infernal device (it's a poison injector that has to be wound every 8 hours or it will spring and kill the wearer).
In other words the players were following two different paths (fake the death vs. rescue the girl) while neither were planning anything to make Schiffren's death _believable_ to the Prussians before hand. That sort of thing is critical in the source material, but they weren't pursuing it. I was forced to step in and point this out, with a follow up question as to whether their plan was to fake the death first and then have a cunning plan to direct Tarkmann's inevitable investigation to convince him that this wasn't a suicide or a faked death. That too would have been a perfectly valid, but it hadn't occurred to them.
This is one of my main concerns about the game as a whole - making sure the players understand both the demands of the caper genre and exactly how much the team can get away with when dealing with an unsuspecting mark. I want to avoid them glossing over some things (like the need to prime the mark into a certain mode of thinking) while preventing them from worrying endlessly about being immediately suspected. Players, knowing that they are the centers of the plot in most games, and the ones who have other people con and betray them all too often in published modules, have a tendency to be far more suspicious of everyone they meet then any normal person. In a caper game the players have to realize that _they_ are the ones doing the con and that the targets _aren't_ used to years of plots where their boss betrays them or their guy selling the treasure map is actually a a mind flayer with Hat of Disguise. (Besides, if the mark is someone who is naturally suspicious you just have to convince them that they're forcing you to do what you want.) this unlearning can be painful.
In any event, with this warning they put forward the plan of Jim and Rachel's characters (the face man and the eye candy, respectively) taking the identity of an Inspectorate officer and his wife who, while at the sale salon with Tarkmann (Rachel's research had already opened up a believable path to that) would let slip to Tarkmann that her husband was investigating a possible Prussian informant at the ministry of advanced technology. Jim's character and Heathers (the party Faerie, wearing a seeming of a burly Inspectorate agent) would therefore not be out of place trying to arrest Schiffren just after the first information drop (they have confirmed that the first round of information was a test, or at least did not contain critical data). Diane's engineer and Tom's military magician built the specially exploding steam carriage and the escape path that would have it crash right over the weakened sewer grate.
As a back up plan, Diane and Heather were to sneak into Tarkmann's HQ and replace Liserl's device with the dummy, so they would have some protection if the main plan went awry. In a lot of ways this was entirely unnecessary - more of a risk than an advantage - but it did give Heather and Diane more to do in the session. It wouldn't have appeared in the TV show, but it worked very well at the table.
The seemed like a good enough plan. The play at the table, and the Cards, said differently. But that's for tomorrow.
