[Torchwood] planning: Political Intrigue -request for advice

[sandman]

First time post!!

**Warning to anyone in my group, please don't read** Although I'm not sure if they are on this board, actually.

I've actually run about a half dozen sessions with my group, having completed the Arrowdown adventure. As there was no timelord character, the group ended up becoming Torchwood London. They are currently in an adventure in the past, inspired by the Diary of the Doctor Who Role Playing Games, issue 1, entitled Sparkles in the Sky.

I'm trying to plan the next adventure, that runs in the background of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

My thought was that when the group returns to the current time period, they will be wanted and arrested by the government. The premise is that now that Cap'n Jack and his Torchwood group is destroyed, all the alien tech information has been hidden on some kind of data disc, and various government agencies are trying to track it down. The mission of our group is 1. break out and 2. to track down the item, while avoiding other competing spies.

Anyone have any advice on how to set up plausible intrigue, with various agencies chasing this data disk, and ways for this Torchwood group to track it down? Especially since they don't know anything about it?

I struggle with this, as I've never been a gamemaster before.

If anyone is interested, we've been logging our adventures on obsidian portal.
doctor-who.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log

[Craig Oxbrow]

That sounds like a good start to me.

I'd borrow a trick from The Maltese Falcon - have several rival groups and individuals all chasing the disc, some friendly and some very much not. This way, the player characters can shift alliances, set one group against another and draw heat away from themselves. (Of course, the other groups can do this too, so they might find more than one of their hunters allying against them!)

They can also try and find someone outside the field to take the disc and give them safety - if the disc gets to UNIT or WikiLeaks or the BBC it becomes unavailable to its pursuers or loses the value of uniqueness.

And if they ever spend too long planning, have someone burst in with a gun!

[sandman]

Thanks for the words of support.

I think I'll go with various groups chasing the data disc (UNIT, MI5, CIA, mafia).

I like the idea that UNIT is a possible friendly.
We'll see how it goes.

[Craig Oxbrow]

I'd suggest adding some aliens (possibly posing as humans) or people using alien tech (since Torchwood had to deal with that frequently) as well, if only to raise the "SF-ish" quotient of the adventure.

(Perhaps aliens who can imitate specific humans, so one group might turn out to be aliens the second time the player characters meet them?)

Good luck!

[doctorrules]

hey!

Sounds like a fun scenario idea. There's a great blog about being a game master called the Alexandrian that can give you much better advice than I can

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule‎

edit: two more links with lots of articles from this guy, I recommend reading the plot point article in the scenario design link at least!

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/tag/scenario-design

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/tag/random-gm-tips

[sandman]

I've just scanned those links. They look really great.

I actually came across the three clue rule in one of the other postings, and started thinking how incredibly useful it is. I will be using that in this campaign.

[doctorrules]

yeah, he's wordy but very helpful. A quick scan though is worth its weight in gold!