Scenarios (part three of three) Casing the Warehouse

Alright everyone, it’s time to finish this! Our scenario is lacking just a few things to elevate it from adequate to fun, so let’s get into it. The goal today is to come up with a name for the warehouse, some hooks or rumours to get players started, and a list of random encounters.

As far as names are concerned, warehouses don’t really have any, it’s more like numbers or some such designation. I’ve already decided on SK01, because sk are the first two letters of the word skladište which is Serbian for warehouse. This whole scenario is a nod to the first session I ran in the most successful campaign that inspired me to make a game, so I think it works.

Now it would be good to have a company name, you know just in case anyone asks. If you tend to get lost in research like I do, it’s always a good idea to think about what it is that you’re looking for first (sounds obvious right?). While it would fit the setting and spirit of the game nicely to tie the warehouse to an individual and have them just be a business owner, I feel like we have introduced enough NPCs so I wanted a proper company with a board, fancy name, and everything. So I went looking for a company name generator because it’s almost always better and certainly easier than coming up with your own stuff. Wouldn’t you know it, the first result was very good - a site called Namelix found at this address: https://namelix.com/ I messed with it a little bit and got the result Freight Ace. It’s good but it reminded me of a lyric from a song called “Pillo“, give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_HYlaUN81s&ab_channel=EASTERJESUSPRODUCTIONS

The lyric in question is “fright face” which was always the coolest part of the song for me so I decided to use that here and name the company FreightFace. The designation of the warehouse building remains SK01 and now enough about names!

John5timzum. (n.d.). *Shipping1*. Thief Wiki | Fandom. https://thief.fandom.com/wiki/OM_T2_Shipping. . ._and_Receiving?file=Shipping1.jpg

Next up are some hooks, which is slang for “why are you here and why have you decided to put yourself in danger?“. There’s many ways you can interpret and use hooks but for me they work best when in form of rumours.

There is a part of character generation that will tell players about their character’s history and relationship with the Empire so I’m thinking about using this as more of a list of rumours that could be true or false that the gm (original term in development) hands out to people in the beginning of the adventure. I think we need around 10 of these so that you can select, roll, not have overlap, etc.

There are so many workers, and often many new ones, barely anyone knows each other (true, it’s very easy to navigate with a disguise on, you have a 4-in-6 chance of fooling someone).
The high-security area always has two guards, and they are always jackasses (at least partially true, depends on what personality is assigned to the guards).
Some guys ditched their shifts only to turn up somewhere far away in the city. The whole thing stinks (true, they were shipped by the jellyfish).
Wolfy, the dog of the main entrance guard, once sniffed my spoon as a weapon and I got into so much trouble explaining it (true).
One of the lockers is rented out to an anonymous client, who always deals via proxy, letters and such (true).
There is a steam elemental patrolling area C (false).
The shift manager never leaves the office (false).
The roof is a security weak spot (partially false).
No one has ever smuggled a weapon past Wolfy (false).
Vasilije, the owner of “The Pavillion“ has a locker stuffed with classified documents (almost entirely false).

I always find true rumours easier to write because it’s just sharing information about the scenario with the players. But, we do need some false ones as well, and all of these could or could not be a bit more mixed together. If you roll a d10 and give them out that way, it should solve the problem of everyone having only one or other kind of rumour. Alternatively you could first give a true one, then a false one, then a true one, etc. It’s important that no rumour gives away too much but that it also doesn’t feel useless or irrelevant, they should also interest the player that receives them but shouldn’t always promise great rewards and secrets, hopefully I’ve achieved that here. Remember that most chitchat, gossip, and rumours are pretty mundane in nature.

And now the finishing touch, the wandering encounters! The discussion surrounding these is endless in a good way and I ended up coming up with my own formula that I think fits the game I’m aiming for. Wandering encounters are only one entry on the table related to ‘the exploration roll‘. Basically, I didn’t find it satisfactory that you could only encounter creatures in the world’s greatest rpg. I wanted to bake in other things such as more mundane situations, lairs or dwellings and that kind of thing. There is a different table for when you’re exploring outdoors. Here’s a snapshot of the table, followed by a quote from my manuscript about wandering encounters:

“The gm is advised to populate and characterise locales with wandering encounter tables. These can be d6, 2d6, 2d4, d10, d20, or whatever the gm finds appropriate. Wandering encounters by their nature should be different to what can be met elsewhere on the exploration table. They should be dangerous, but they don’t have to be immediately hostile, and they should represent the place in which they are seen. Further, all encountered entities should have a reason for being there – a motivation, even if they are just sitting and waiting (what are they waiting for?).”

For this situation, I’m going to make six entries as I feel it’s enough to populate a scenario of this scope. With such a list, you don’t run the risk of wasting a lot of prep and there’s still enough that it feels a bit random. The chances of encountering each of these are fairly slim I think, though I haven’t done the math.

Imperial Inspection.
Representative of the Management.
Tinkerthieves.
Boredom elemental.
Rebel.
Box Jellyfish.

Just like before, we do another pass, fleshing things out with details.

Imperial Inspection. Vojkan Pajić and entourage of d6 bodyguards (axes and rifles). There to question certain workers, search for suspicious activity, and dig through the files of the warehouse.
Representative of the Management. Vladana Popadić who’s there to order the warehouse to dismantle and scavenge an docking ship. Will mobilise all of the workers and Basiane for that purpose.
Tinkerthieves. Little bastards that love stealing tools, knickknacks, and such. They later install those stolen things into their ratlike yet humanoid bodies. They know everything about the warehouse. BODY 5 TUF D4. Firecrackers (G) - pass a MIND save or lose action this round. Shanks d6.
Boredom elemental. Annoyed at all the activity humans do, wishes to slow things down and make them more difficult. Yawn (G) - pass a SOUL save or tell a really long story. Prevention aura (G) - pass a BODY save or you cannot leave the area this round.
Rebel. Srđan Marković is hiding around the warehouse, posing as a worker. Wanted by the authorities because he killed an official at a protest rally. Pistol d6.
Box Jellyfish. A veritable urban legend of the warehouse. Huge floating box with tentacles made of sellotape. Hunting sloppy workers. You encounter d6 of these. TUF d8. Wrap - pass a BODY save or become stuck in tape-tentacles. The Jellyfish will then store you inside itself and float away to ship you somewhere. It needs about ten minutes to reach the export area (area B).

*Untitled*

(Own work, photography, 2019).

Wheeeeew! That is that for the warehouse SK01! It feels real good to finish something like this. I don’t think I’ll be writing about scenarios in this way again, at least for a while. There probably will be more scenarios posted here, just not explained in such detail, with ‘showing the work‘ and all that.

Few tiny updates and thoughts. I'm thinking about how the names will land. Serbian names are not the easiest to pronounce or read if you aren’t acquainted with the culture at least a little bit. So my idea is to include a transliteration guide for the English language but this is still in the works. Also, I’ve switched my game’s attributes from STR, DEX, and CHA to BODY, MIND, and SOUL. The biggest change is that now we have one physical and two mental stats instead of the other way around. I think it works and I prefer the reference to alchemical categories of components that make up a person.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-series and now we are free to explore new horizons! See you next week ;)

The school year begins

Scenarios (part two (of three)) - Casing the Warehouse