My next campaign will be of”Leverage”-style: The PC will be criminals, but not necessarily with a Criminal record or belonging to the Submondo faction.
A little fine tuning will be needed:
many Psywar
moderate Infowar
few Warfare, mostly Close Combat, particular Martial Arts and Brawling
the missions will be mostly Stealth missions, but there would be also Standard or even Combat primary missions.
loot will be dependent on the fighting, especially during the Stealth missions: ever fight will drop the possible loot
The first story arc will be posses a few of the typical missions: fighting pirates to protect a small settlement, rescue the daughter of a wealthy CEO, because the law enforcement possess no rights to intervention (maybe extraterritorial). But most missions are so called Stealth Missions”: the group has to get some data, an object or something similar, without killing someone! Every kill (from the group) will drop the loot.
But most importantly in every mission is a link to Deltaform, a relative small intersystem corporation. So may the pirates get their supply from a stalking-horse (correct term?) subsidiary of Deltaform. Or the kidnappers work for a letterbox firm of Deltaform aso. After the PC realise these links, they might want to spy Deltaform. So the next several missions will be to get access to the Deltaform HQ. In the end they discover that the CEO of Deltaform is just a goon of Starlight Incorporated! And Starlight is a really Big Player. So they have to find a way into the Starlight HQ to discover, whey the CEO of Starlight has done this all.
But there are still some points I have troubles with:
Why should the PC (if they are criminals) should help normal people against the mighty ones? Especially when the loot are mostly small. The first missions the PC will be hired, but by who? Someone from Starlight, who knows about the whole scheme? Or mostly unlinked recruiters?
The CEO of Starlight shouldn’t be a Shasvastii changeling mole, this would be much to easy. So I was thinking, that he wants to resurrect his wife and daughter. But he isn’t just buying this from the Nomads?
Your PCs could be a ragtag mercenary group, with few job opportunities. This campaign could be both a meal ticket and a way to create themselves a reputation. Money would be the motiv at first, the fact they are going after serious client could be their futur resume. “You truly think we can’t handle those wannabe triads? We took down ■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Starlight!”
for the CEO motive, hard to tell without knowing the faction/planet/city. But one reason could be that starlight made itself an enemy of Bakunin, blacklisting them with Praxis. And the CEO’s family might not qualify for resurrection by official means. The illegal activities might be a manner to earn praxis favour or to leverage officials.
Deltaform should be a Nomad corporation with it HQ based on Corregidor, but Starlight is a PanO hypercorp, with it HQ official based on Neoterra, but it is really in Human Edge.
But Starlight control several other corps, too:
Hung Far Security, Yu Ling security corp
Prawda Networks, Ariadna: news network with it HQ in Mat’
Dual Faith, an Haqqislam medical and cybernetics corporation, lead by an unknown Silk Lord from the city of Ad Qaliwara
several minor corporations dotted through the Human Sphere.
Starlight could be the puppet of the hexaedron or Aleph in an attempt to create a scandal with the nomad nation. The ceo could be blackmailed by yujing to destabilise a major panO hypercorp, thus dealing a major blow to its economy.
I can’t help but get an A-Team / Firefly vibe.
Starting with friends asking for help. When competitors and dissidents of Deltaform, or your wealthy CEO hear of it, they start offering jobs. The more the PCs do and the way they do it, Deltaform will be inclined to get a hold of them.
Staring with small news and a bit of bounty, then hearing the sirens at the end of a mission up to special forces interrupting them so they have to abort and bail.
Just depending on their playstyle, with options to decrease the “heat” by laying low, setting false trails, or even striking some deal, blackmail, favours, whatever…
I’ve been thinking for a while about running an Ocean’s 11 type of campaign and, although it is not quite the same thing as Leverage, after reading through this thread I know in which game I’ll be running it.
not too long ago i’ve read Star Wars: scoundrels. Pretty much an Ocean’s Plot with Han and Lando within their smuggler days. It is entertaining and has some stuff for inspiration.
I would suggest, if you’re leaning towards heists in an Infinity game, that you allow narrative declarations from spending Infinity Points to be described as flashbacks. Flashbacks as a mechanical/narrative concept in RPGs help smooth over some of the rough edges of heists and cut down on the pre-planning, and Infinity Points are the best way to allow for them in Infinity.
A year later: how did your “Leverage/Infinity” game work out? How many sessions/jobs did you play?
What about the good, the bad and the ugly of your campaign concept?
