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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Longtooth Studios" data-source="post: 5150337" data-attributes="member: 82817">This should fit into any city based adventure path you may be running.Drop by my website and check out other offerings!   Xpedition Xtras for your city campaign  “Yes sir, I know that there were six guards watching the back entrance of the hideout and not three like I told you.” The young paperboy jumps back avoiding capture.” Gee whiz mister! I don’t understand why you are so sore, as I remember it, I asked you to pay ten gold for the information and not five. “  The Paper BoysAlmost anything can be bought in this city. From the docks, all the way to the highest wall, vendors peddling their wares can be found. The hungry can be fed. The weary can find rest. And for the lonely, there is no shortage of offerings there, either. However, if you want to know why Three Bricks Alley has been blocked off, or why Mr. Cecilio, the cobbler, has boarded up his house and no longer accepts customers, then you have two choices. You can either go find out first hand, or you can find a Paperboy.   The paperboys are an expansive network of orphaned children who deliver a weekly news publication to the far corners of the city. This is a very agreeable arrangement, and one of the few ways the homeless youth can find employment and a measure of security. The streets are no place for the young and defenseless, but that is just what happens more often than most citizens would like to know. By tragedy or neglect, children are forced out of their warm beds and the loving embrace of their mothers, into the cold, hard brutality of survival on the streets. Most do not make it very long. Starvation, exploitation, and slavery are not the worst fates that await orphaned children. Those who make it on their own rarely overcome social disadvantages enough to offer anything back to the societies that have abandoned them. When found, food and shelter are offered to the orphaned youth while he or she is brought into the network and shown the ropes. After nightfall, the youth is educated for a few hours developing the ability to read and write in multiple languages, as well as trained with the skills needed to survive life on the streets. When the youth’s ability to serve as a scribe makes him too valuable to risk with a dangerous route, he is replaced with a new recruit, and spends the next several years producing the news-pages that the younger members distribute.  This is about as deeply as most understand the paperboys. A splendid charity that provides a purpose for street urchins that would normally be forced to turn to crime to survive.   What your common citizen does not understand is the extent of the organized efforts of the paperboys. Each paperboy is trained to gather information from the routes that they are assigned. They listen to rumors, and gossip as they walk unnoticed among the populace. The information is brought to the warehouse where it is processed, recorded, and compared to the rest of the reports that flow in. Next, the mature sect of the organization, the Reporters, hit the streets to spy on and confirm the subjects of the initial reports. They walk unseen in plain sight as they dig deeper to find valuable information. These highly skilled individuals often moonlight as cat burglars and assassins, and are often groomed from the lower ranks of the organization. This is likely one of the reasons why no one has challenged the paperboys at higher levels, despite the sensitive information in which they deal. Once the chafe has been separated from the wheat, the information is funneled to the mysterious leader of the organization known only as The Editor. The Editor packages the information into coded messages that are included into what are known as “special editions.” The special editions are then distributed to those who have paid a premium for such exclusive information.  Each special edition appears to be a common news-page, but is unique and can only be decoded using a special cipher that has been purchased directly from the Editor. Since every normal news-page is hand drafted by a scribe in his own words, there is no pattern that can be established from one page to the next that might betray the hidden messages that are distributed in secret.   To your players, the paperboys offer a few interesting details that can be used to enhance the game. Perhaps, the paperboy would make a great history for the rogue of the party, and ground the character into the setting. Another option would be to use the paperboys to add a flavorful source of information to the game that is a little more developed than the players simply making diplomacy checks to pick up information. This could be accomplished not only in the form of the news-page that is distributed, but also with coded information directly from the Editor, or from the paperboy’s own mouth if the price is right. Developing Identities for individual paperboys whose route places them in the path of the PCs is encouraged. I play the paperboys as being a benevolent force in the city, prone to helping underground movements with cheap information and connections with the right kind of people. I discourage abuse and bullying of the lower ranks by including rumors or evidence of a powerful and skilled upper echelon of the organization that have been known to avenge their younger brethren.   I intentionally left the name of the publication un-named so that it can be further customized into your campaign.     </blockquote>

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