Playing WoF on the eve of the mouthwash confession

[Psion]

The downside to the Mouthwash confession is that it makes the world different in a sensible way. I just can't reasonably tell the players they have been playing in the WoF all along.

So my plan at this time is to start the next game on the eve of the mouthwash confession. This means I'll have to set the clock back a bit from where the WoF book presumes play begins.

The group are up-and-coming troubleshooters working for a obscure government entity whose front is a well funded think tank called the Institute for Policy Studies.

My plan at this point is to have the Mouthwash Confession only capture IPS activities up until the point that the players get involved. The latest data packet containing their latest activities didn't get sent before the submission. Still, the rest of the organization gets burned, including the deputy director and moral compass of the organization, who is revealed to be a shadow patriot.

This is an opportunity for the PCs to become shadow patriots, though new PCs might be from other factions if they display interest.

Anyone else deal with this sort of scenario? Any opportunities for play in such an era? How would you handle this?

[DavalTy]

I assume you're speaking about some sort of "legacy" transition, where you want to work an existing, ongoing campaign into the WoF setting?

It would occur to me that the problem of not being a part of WoF "all along" is not really a problem at at. Sure, the confession blows the lid off of things and brings to light a great many problems, but that doesn't mean that they weren't there before.

One of the great things that WoF does (SFA had a strength for this as well) was to twist history in such a way as to make the current story feel lived in. If you wanted to, you could do this as well. Come up with some narrative that causes your players to wonder if some of their previous villans (and even allies) were part of some greater conspiracies/organizations that were heretofore unknown to them.

I dig your "eve" idea. The Mouthwash Confession has huge potential to be a plot point as an even in its own right, not just the aftermath.

Ty

[Psion]

I assume you're speaking about some sort of "legacy" transition, where you want to work an existing, ongoing campaign into the WoF setting?

Yep.

Exploring previously unknown conspiracies, as you say, is not the problem. And I'm not really saying there IS a problem beyond the simple fact that the campaign book isn't precisely targeted at that time; it talks about that in past tense and sort of assumes that PITFALL, etc, are in full swing.

Moreover, it gives me time to evolve the campaign while I am waiting for the flags to come out (I just hope Shadow Patriots and AEG are soon...)

More, though, I am fishing for ideas for activities that might be good mission ideas while things are evolving.

[famine]

Well, there is always the option of having your team sent out to take someone out, and having them find out mid-mission that their mark was targeted to keep a dirty secret of your handler's from reaching the public.  This could also evolve into the group going awol and joining another faction if they feel used and disgusted with learning their agency was so dirty.

[Crafty_Alex]

Moreover, it gives me time to evolve the campaign while I am waiting for the flags to come out (I just hope Shadow Patriots and AEG are soon...)

More, though, I am fishing for ideas for activities that might be good mission ideas while things are evolving.

An easy way to do it would be this - have each mission run advance the timeline towards the present day. So on mission 1, the mouthwash confession hits - the agents working for the Powers that Be to hunt down and "discover" who is responsible. In the next mission, Pitfall has just been authorized by the UN, and maybe the agents work with them to find the culprits (or act on useful information exposed by the Confession). In the next mission, the team stumbles across Alex's dad while he's still alive, and do something with/to him.

It's a cool way to make the characters feel they're standing on the stage of history, particularly if they aren't reading the book in their spare time, and gives you a nice bed of ideas to run with, even spreading the agents' actions out over time.

[Psion]

Well, I ran the first session last night.

The snoop/faceman, intruder/raptor, and sleuth/hacker were all gone for the session, leaving me with the explorer/stuntman, wheelman/advocate/transporter, and pointman/soldier. Or in simpler terms, the sneaky/investigative folks were gone, leaving me with the physical action bunch.

What I opted for was a reprise of a previous adventure. I ran the LSpy adventure Triple Play as a previous mission; the short story is the players had to aid a blackmailed asset that kept congressional dollars coming their way.

So, I assumed that Senator Sullivan's dirty deals would all come out with the Mouthwash confession, and the organization would have to secure the next head of the senate intelligence committee, Senator Carothers. However, he was in Berlin (which due to some info revealed about German politicians is in riot status) seeing his mistress (which the agency's deputy director recognized, and due to another revalation in the mouthwash confession, he was able to piece together was an agent of some sort. In truth, the Bloodvine Syndicate, but that isn't known yet.)

So the mission became a covert extraction mission to get the Senator out of Germany and separate him from his mistress (who, for all the agency knows, has instructions to kill the senator.) In the mean time, the mistress figures out that her cover has been blown and that a vengeful mercenary unit are after HER, she decides to flee the country with the senator. It could also be love, who knows...

In short, the agents arrive to find the Senator and his mistress fleeing from a covert paramilitary unit.


That was that adventure; I really could have run an adventure like this at any time. The main thing I was trying to get across was this thing has consequences.

Hopefully, the more investigative players are around next time and we can dip into the sort of personal consequences that will push the players away from the existing flags. What's really going on at IPS (my "Agency") is that the deputy director knows that IPS's days are numbered. In truth, the deputy director is a Shadow Patriot and is trying to calve off little bits that can be hidden away (including the PCs, who weren't in the last intelligence assessment in the PIT.) The players have the opportunity to become Shadow Patriots, but I plan future missions to have mixed up involvement with the other factions.