Inspiration for an urban intrigue/espionage adventure

Ralif Redhammer said:

That’s a great idea for a first session in an urban campaign, one I wouldn’t have thought of. Sounds like a solid way to ground them in the worldbuilding, and get to know each other’s characters. Might have to use it for my next campaign…

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Thanks! Yep, I wasn't confident enough to really start my planned storyline as there were too many loose ends whose resolution depended on players' behavior. Now I have a better idea of the direction things are going to take.

So, most of my prep time went into reading enough about the setting to be able to develop the city "off the cuff" and make it come to life in a (in fantasy-terms) plausible way, rather than detailing a storyline.

For instance, I planted a few seeds to anchor characters in the setting. One discovered that his former captain, which he respected but thought dead, had survived and become a street lord offering employment to idle veterans. Another had a relative running an inn. A third player, tasked by his organization to discover and study unusual animals, got a raptor from barbarians encountered in the market place for exotic goods.

I also had a few memorable locations at hand: a museum, the bazaar of the bizarre mentioned above, a mobster-populated tavern hidden by a dimensional door, a not-truly-haunted abandoned cathedral, and more. But these were the ones players visited.

Eltab said:

When the police figure out two gangs are fighting each other, they just hang back and watch.

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Sounds like the rational thing to do. However, what happens if the guards don't understand immediately what's really going on? The lair is vast after all, they need not meet all involved parties right away.

Magean said:

However, what happens if the guards don't understand immediately what's really going on?

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From your description, it sounded like the two gangs were already fighting when the police show up to deal with yet another 'disturbing the peace'. The police see a bunch of people they already have a long history with, going after each other hammer-and-tongs. The police can then decide to hang back until just a few guys are standing. Arrest everybody who is down, catch whoever you can that flees.

Maybe the PCs show up in the middle of it all and just barge in from the opposite direction. Now the police have to decide what to do about / with THEM.

Ralif Redhammer said:

As far as inspiration goes, I’d recommend reading Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series and watching the first batch of James Bond movies.

As much as I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, I don’t think they’re a good place to start for inspiration. Most players aren’t gifted with superhuman powers of observation, after all.

There’s also a wonderful blog entry on mystery/investigation adventures that I’ve found to be vastly useful:

a D&D player’s advice to DMs running mystery games

For my part, I think that the key to proper investigation adventures is to not have a set “go there, do this, then go there, do this” outline. Instead, come up with interesting characters, complications, dead ends, and events. Then let the players decide how they are going to try to unravel the mystery. The key is to make sure that even when they’re wrong, something interesting or fun is happening. I don’t need to know that they’re going to ask Gungmiles the Sage in the Tower District about the spell component residue, but I do need to know that informant #1 is a gnome, speaks in overly complicated terms, knows about the spell components used in the secret ritual, and wants his competitor embarrassed in return for the information. Who the informant ends up being lies with the players. Maybe they decide to ask that drunken wizard they helped out a few adventures ago. Or go to the cleric's elders.

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Personally I'd recommend the Jason Bourne novels and movies as opposed to Bond myself. James Bond in my opinion is a bit too over the top theactrical and leans heavily into absurdity. If you do decide to watch the Bond movies go for the Pierce Brosnan era which focuses more properly on realistic plot and character while still maintaining "the fun factor" to a respectable degree. Daniel Craig is a second best choice with very little to no fantastical elements.

Obsidian Agent Domino said:

James Bond in my opinion is a bit too over the top theactrical and leans heavily into absurdity.

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Doesn't that make him perfect fodder for D&D?

More seriously, though, Bourne is a decent shout. Depending on the style you want, you might also consider John Le Carré. They're obviously also intrigue and espionage based, but much more gritty than either Bond or Bourne. (At one point I considered a campaign that was one-part his works, one part "Nineteen Eighty-Four", one-part "The Demolished Man" by Bester, all set in Sarlona. But it never went anywhere. Maybe I should dust that off...)

Bond stories generally translate very well into find/enter/destroy wizard/supervillain base adventures.

delericho said:

Doesn't that make him perfect fodder for D&D?

More seriously, though, Bourne is a decent shout. Depending on the style you want, you might also consider John Le Carré. They're obviously also intrigue and espionage based, but much more gritty than either Bond or Bourne. (At one point I considered a campaign that was one-part his works, one part "Nineteen Eighty-Four", one-part "The Demolished Man" by Bester, all set in Sarlona. But it never went anywhere. Maybe I should dust that off...)

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John Le Carre is certainly my cup of tea, but I just realized this thread is from 2017...

payn said:

John Le Carre is certainly my cup of tea, but I just realized this thread is from 2017...

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Ah, I see your point: a Karrnathi necromancer has reanimated something old, and now the PCs must infiltrate his lair, ducking undead dinosaurs and other horrors to thwart him..

Yeah, that's definitely more Bond than Smiley.

payn said:

John Le Carre is certainly my cup of tea, but I just realized this thread is from 2017...

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Yes it is! As the OP, I got a notification. Sometimes a necro can be a pleasant surprise.

Back to the topic (it's mine! miiiiiine!), Bond is an obvious source of inspiration, Bourne is very good too. Both have the "over-the-top" feel you'd expect from D&D or any other game where the PCs are larger-than-life pulp heroes. Le Carré's novels are too... "quiet" for that kind of game. With that said, Le Carré's intrigues (not the way the characters "solve" them) can definitely be ripped from his books and adapted into Eberron.

In the meantime - five years! - I learnt many things RPG-wise. A very relevant discovery for such a campaign is the GUMSHOE game Night's Black Agents. There's a solo version (Solo Ops) that's directly inspired by Bourne: essentially, the PC is a super-spy who's been burnt and now needs to unravel conspiracies on his or her own. And, if you're into modular mega-campaigns, the Dracula Dossier is a must-read. Even if you don't play it, there's so much to steal from it, and so much replayability as well: each NPC or item is presented in multiple ways, from innocent (or not so innocent, but independent from the main conspiracies) to pawn of Dracula to member of a rogue MI6 cell.

Still from that game, "conspyramids" and "vampyramids" are marvelous tools that can be reincorporated into any other system:

What else? More recently, I discovered an old 2e supplement for the Forgotten Realms, that offers plenty details on factions and secret puppeteers:
Lots of reusable stuff there.

Also, if you struggle to come up with a plot, Technoir has a great plot-generating engine, in the form of Transmissions and the Composition part of the manual. I playtested the game itself and, well, it wasn't a stellar experience... But the GM-dedicated tools are great, and can be borrowed and implemented elsewhere.

One of the elements for intrigue featured urban adventures involve criminal syndicates. While this was designed for Pathfinder, derived from the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide city stat block rules - thus a subsystem, so should work fine in 5e. These rules to create custom Yakuza gangs (the rules were featured in Way of the Yakuza by Rite Publishing), but you can find the rules at d20pfsrd. The rules allow you to choose make rules or simply choose the alignment of Syndicate Boss, the Gang Boss and the Lieutenant, then further tables provide options (or roll), for managing style and other factors to create the nuance for each crime syndicate. It creates the meat you need to drive specific intrigue in your game...

On the mechanical side there were a bunch of 3rd party supplements for Dragon Heist that added some rules and whatnot that might help you here. The one I remember the name of is Here's to Crime, which, amongst other things, hacks the BitD flashback mechanic for 5e play.