Prince With a Thousand: City Infiltration Procedure (GLoGtober 2024)

Alan Lee

This is a procedure for that early Assassin's Creed-ass situation where you must carefully navigate a city controlled by an antagonistic force, one where thousands of people live and provide cover for your activities on accident, while guards are on the lookout for you in particular.

 Every public place is potentially hostile. A patrol of guards is less like a normal combat encounter and more like a trap or puzzle-- how do you avoid a confrontation that mobilizes the city against you. If their notice is brought down on you, how do you escape and hide?

In theory, every antagonistic city should be mapped out with routes between all the landmarks. In practice, I'm personally more likely to realize partway through a session that I'd like to use this procedure, and would like to be able to adapt it on the fly. So, here is a route type table:

d6 Route Types

1. Empty Streets. No native opportunity for stealth.

2.  Checkpoint. Guaranteed static encounter.

3. Cramped Alleys. May be underground or interior passages.

4. Vertical Intersections. Bridges, different levels, roofs. etc. 50% of encounters having no good way to reach you right away.

5. No Man's Land. Residents move in small groups. Many oppose the ruling powers.

6. Busy Boulevards. Won't be noticed until you draw attention to yourself.

Encounters
Encounters should occur at a comparable rate to dungeon encounters. To me that's a 1-in-6 chance per route and location, but I might increase that if I didn't design the rest of the city to be likewise dangerous. It makes sense to curate an encounter table for each antagonistic city. Again, think of these encounters as being like traps-- with signs the players can pick up on, triggers, and effects.

Sample Encounters

• Pair of wandering guards with halberds, lanterns, and horns.
• Dark riders, literally able to pick up the PCs' smell. Normal people don't get near them.
• Bullying bravos. Harass people rather than earnestly search out enemies. Seeming like a victim might be safest.
• Squad of counter-insurgents. Not necessarily seeking the PCs, but locking down the area to arrest other enemies.
• Spies-- something's off about these civilians.
• Aerial observation. Large, clumsy, perceptive forces overhead.
• Politicized animals. Their eyes are spies for Sauron.
• VIP and entourage.
• Elephant-sized mount, essentially a clumsy and fearful APC.
• Collaborators. Bureaucrats, but knowledgeable of the city and how you may abuse it.
• Inspectors. Papers please!
• Cordoned-off perimeter. Line of soldiers, no bypass without proof of rank.
• Overseers. May conscript passers-by for a day's labor.

Like you would do for a standard hazard or trap, let players describe how they (if needed, detect, then) avoid encounters. Good ideas don't need to roll here, but try to vary the exact disposition of encounters so that their tactics must always be sensitive to the particular situation. Characters with powers of stealth may be able to roll those even after a plan fails to pan out. That's like their saving throw, to continue the comparison to bypassing a trap.

Penalties for Notice

In antagonistic cities, the enemy force is aware of the PCs and opposed to them. If guards notice who they are, they might have only a few seconds for a hail-mary, then the situation turns deadly. They have the option of running it as a combat, but this is a bad idea in an enemy city. Let more reinforcements arrive, let escape routes get cut off, let chaos ensue. 

It would be wiser for the PCs to flee. In that case, let them make a save to avoid damage or other effects as their enemies pursue them through the streets. If they survive, then they've made it away. The amount of long-term heat they draw is based on how important they are as enemies. If the antagonistic city is just opposed to them as thieves, upstarts, or unpersons as a matter of course, they might be able to get away with hiding in an alley for ten minutes, then carrying on. If the party is prophesied to slay the tyrant occupying the antagonistic city, they'll have to navigate to another sector of the city, deal with increased chances of encounters, and possibly get tracked back to their hideout.

Example
For your consideration, here is an encounter table for the city of Nevermore.

d6 Encounters
1. Pair of Wandering Guards with halberds, lanterns, and horns. Notice: save vs death or take 1d6 damage.

2. Doctore, several Orderlies, and three Judge-Executioners. Curtly seeking signs of plague. Notice: 2d6 damage, save vs wands for half.
3. Riot Court. Torches, yelling, an angry mob but not the cool kind. Notice: save vs breath. On failure, you've been grabbed and dragged off to the Vigilante Jury.
4. Quarantine. Line of guards turn everyone away. Notice: save vs death or take 1d8 damage.
5. Two Plague Birds, man-sized, perched in a vantage point. Notice: save vs death. On failure, 1d4 damage from the King's Plague, +1 for all previous contact with King's Plague. +3 encounter chance on next encounter roll, due to squawking.
6. Suborned Gangsters with brutal blades. Forceful "requisitioners" and peddlers of protection. Notice: 1d4 objects snatched and 1d6 damage, save vs paralysis for half.

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 "A procedure relating to a city" for GLoGtober 2024.