Okay, so I want to do a campaign soon that is basically CSI. Episodic sessions that focus on a central crime as a mystery, with the PCs as the investigators. How to do this without limiting the PCs on their character options and keep it interesting? Any way to get away with the concept without it forcing them into law enforcement or a security hypercorp? And where would be the bast place for this? I was thinking Mars, as the high population, land based setting and political backdrop work well, but would there be anywhere better?
And even after all that's decided, what mysteries to do? Any ideas are welcome.
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Campaign Idea Help!
Tue, 2013-08-13 12:21
#1
Larvae
Campaign Idea Help!
Tue, 2013-08-13 22:35
#2
Lalande21185
I like Olympus on Mars.
For this type of campaign, I like Olympus on Mars as a setting:
1. The space elevator and large transitory population and easy access to space, making it simple to have a wide range of character types present.
2. You can use the space elevator for a locked room mystery, if you want.
3. Fuxingmen is sparsely inhabited, giving lots of spime sensor holes that make writing mysteries much easier... but Central and Deshingmen are still inhabited which you can use to introduce elements of the panopticon.
4. The setting is close enough to modern earth to make it easy for players to grasp.
5. Excellent political backdrop, in addition to the usual martian issues you also have ComEx vs. OIA and a bunch of political maneuvering around the city government.
This may be a little self promoting, but you can look at my adventures for some inspiration. [em]Chain Reaction[/em] is a missing person case. And the list of fake ID's in [em]Dance with the Devil[/em] might give you some inspiration for character types that might get involved in an investigation (Private Detectives, Gang Members, University Members, Corrupt Wageslaves), and all three have places and maps that you can use.
Edit: figured I should mention where to find my scenarios. Which is [url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]here[/url].
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[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]
Tue, 2013-08-13 16:27
#3
Arenamontanus
I do think Mars is pretty
I do think Mars is pretty good. Stable location, somewhat reasonable institutions. The OTA or other law enforcement organisations might simply be outsourcing to an independent forensic company.
Of course, I have a bias towards Extropia, and I even briefly discuss forensic companies in Law and Order: Extropia. It is a wild place, so I can totally imagine almost any faction, technology and bizarre motivation coming up. But it might be a bit too wild for this kind of campaign.
An interesting and very different thing would be to place things among the Autonomists. Here you would have much more informal rules, but also a social landscape to navigate. I can totally see a crossover into Scandinavian-style detective stories on Titan... :-)
Mysteries: maybe it is worth watching some random CSI episodes and giving them EP twists? Just briefly looking at the list of season two gives plenty of ideas. 2:2 "Chaos Theory" might easily be transferred - a great case of why the Bad Luck trait can be really bad. 2:12 "You've Got Male" might work in an interesting way with those prison uploads I discuss in my extropia text. 2:23 "The Hunger Artist" might become a really scary story about async sisters, hyperelites and extreme body design.
Murders because of mistaken morph identity. Theft attempts of priceless artifacts, aided by nanoforgeries. People fooled by AR illusions (ah, worth checking out Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex too!)
One fun aspect is that the victims can be back from backup, annoying the investigation. And the important investigations are not the ones about killed morphs, but the ones that cost people much more money (who sabotaged the shuttle? who stole the Cirkovic Manuscript?)
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Tue, 2013-08-13 20:50
#4
NewtonPulsifer
I actually ran my players as
I actually ran my players as gonzo journalists in Lalande21185's modules.
Worked out just about perfectly to allow full latitude on character concepts.
They made more money the more people hit their mesh site, so it indirectly nudged them into being fearless (and over the top) in their gonzo reporting. It wasn't very "future horror" but did lead to a variety of hilarious situations.
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Wed, 2013-08-14 07:57
#5
Lorsa
I'm not sure I can help you
I'm not sure I can help you with the question how to do it without limiting character options. For my first (and so far only) campaign I had the players working for Saturn General Security, an extropian-minded security firm that had good reputation with the autonomists (although there were rumours that the top was being run by PC friendlies). At first I planned it only as a one-mission introduction to Eclipse Phase but it evolved from there and eventually Firewall was introduced. There were plenty of variations in the missions, but a few involved murder. So my general advice is; it doesn't have to be limiting to ask the players to work for law enforcement or a security firm. I would personally go for Rimward because it offers so much more diversity in habitats and you can play around a lot with your creativity.
It was first planned to be 3 players, but one hardly had time and one moved to China after the first 2 adventures so in the end it became a solo campaign. Ended up being quite amusing though, with the player noticing some discrepancies in the missions that were weird but he couldn't quite figure out in time to realize that the Plantery Consortium was setting up quite a lot of these problem so that SGS (the security firm) could solve them and look good so they'd be voted in by the large habitat the player mainly lived in as law enforcement. Considering the character was an anarchist, she got quite upset when she realized that she had been a pawn for a PC powerplay.
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Wed, 2013-08-14 17:47
#6
Xagroth
Know the gear and the skills
My advice is for you to have some knowledge of all the gear and skills that the players have at hand. For example, with nanoscopic vision and nanoscopic hands the players can scan a room veeery deeply. It just takes some hours (it is mentioned in Transhuman somewhere, but I don't know the numbers). They could fit the implant to some bots and use them for a faster sweep...
But of course, we can reduce CSI methods to a bunch of options:
- Witnesses
- Recordings
- Trail
- Means
Panopticon can give you hand in the Recordings part, being centered on surveillance and the like. Olympus, though, is a little like a ghost town, not to mention it has a hell of a weather. So you can get away at least a handful of times telling that there is no local recordings of the mistery (choose: no cam, broken cam, stolen cam...).
The Witnesses are completely under your control, so you can use them as needed.
The Trail is the worst part. We are talking about a society where people can bodysurf with ease. We are talking about a society where the biomorph's DNA is very likely registered. Which means we are looking at passional crimes with bios, or planned crimes using Synthmorphs.
So the culprit would leave very little trace, yet you can insert a Witness in a biomorph that can be tracked and interrogated. Or maybe the problem is precisely that the culprit is surfing between Cases (the synthmorph) to escape after killing somebody with a morph already dissassembled...
Or maybe the culprit used a biomorph without any DNA register.
That leads us to the Means. What was used to commit the crime? A weapon? Track where to buy it. How to dispose of it. Did he use some skill, like Infosec to hack into another's cyberbrain? Find the synth.
Of course, the problem arises when we talk about the killing of random people in cheap synthmophs, that can be hacked to jump out of a cliff or something more crude, like self-deletion (or blowing their brains). It would be nearly impossible to track all those crimes, so maybe you want the players to be involved.
Is the victim important? Or is somebody related to one player? There is an advantage in the Core Book for 30 CP quite interesant for this, since you can be asked thanks to that one to find the criminal.
And of course, you might want things to be Important. Killing people with Backups ready is... mundane. PC's have to be epic, do epic things. So the crime must not be easily undone. What was lost? A life? Some memories of the last XX days? A unique set of data? Or is it only the need to stop a mass murderer before he bankrupts the Backup Insurance company?