Breaking In: Asking the Agency, No Free Will Required
It was brought to my attention that I have posted twice about Triangle Agency this week, and that is an Unstable Number. Accordingly, let's get it up to a proper three!
I'm going to work an example of the principles I talked about in my last post based on my conversation with Caleb and a real occurrence that happened last session.
My players wished to enter a club named Azure Nightmare which was locked by a large padlock and chain. In practice, they solved this with "I Know a Shortcut," but let's imagine they didn't have a Manifold on call. What follows is my imagined dialogue on how this might work.
Player A: "Uh, could there just be an acetylene torch nearby we could use to cut the chain?"
GM: "Sure, but how did it get there?"
Player B, who just watched Ocean's 8 for the third time: "Oh I know, what if a crew of thieves left their stuff there? Like, they were going to break in but they got spooked."
Player A: "Hm, why did they do that?" thinks for a moment "Let's go with the old standby - there was a trend on TikTok that said these locks were sold by the government to protect important secrets, so now people make a game out of breaking them even on non-government buildings, usually with this kind of torch."
GM: squints bewilderingly, but sees Player A's point. After a moment's thought, "That's batshit but in a strange way, that makes sense as to why they were here, batshit or not. Why did they leave the stuff behind?"
Player C: "A car backfired! It sounded like a gun!"
Everyone facepalms. Player C is always suggesting this. But, it seems to get results.
GM: "I really don't by that they would leave their stuff though. Can we ask why again?"
Player D, who doesn't usually feel like they can contribute, but is lit up with a great idea: "There's a rumor also going around that the Cartersfield PD has been in 'shoot first, ask questions later' mode. Can we add a siren going by at the same time because there was a call made for an address uptown?"
Everyone is taken aback, but the GM nods pensively. "I think that covers all of our bases. Let me just make a few notes..."
Here, we can see the core elements that influenced the thieves to act:
- The trend of cutting through this specific type of lock on TikTok
- Mundane events in the form of a police siren sounding and a car backfiring. One could maybe continue ask why the police siren was there, but in my opinion, that can be explained by a phone call (that could be made by a robocaller) to get the police to go somewhere specific.
- The second, related trend that the Cartersfield PD is dangerous.
This third element is the most crucial, I think. This tells us something new and interesting about the world which will come up every time the Cartersfield PD comes up again, either with their reputation in the town or the Agents' interaction with them. Hopefully, this makes the process I describe in my previous post clear!