Escape from Coventry Pre-gen Ideas [IW]

[ericthered]

In the 'games you wish you could play' thread the idea of an 'escape from Coventry' one-shot with pre-generated characters came up. I find the idea intriguing, but I'm working out the details in my mind, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what pre-gens ought to be available to the characters. My main concerns are:

Power level: the characters should be capable enough to break out of Coventry. Cases can be made for anywhere between 150 to 300 points.

Supernatural/Exotic: The classical ISWAT vs ICop divide. Is it easier (or funner) to run normals who found out too much, or to make characters who either said no to ISWAT or were considered unfit to work for it. There is some blending possible here: light-weight mages, exotic variant humans, former jumpers, and so forth. Though I suppose Coventry is implied to be no-mana by virtue of having no native human inhabitants... that can be hand-waved, but may be included as part of coventry's protections.

So what characters would you pre-gen for 'escape from coventry'?

[ericthered]

My initial Ideas:

Disgruntled ex-ICop:
TL 8, Homeline
fell in love with local and got both of them exiled.

Corporate Hacker:
TL 8, Brazil, Shiakumon
Investigated a member of the Contact division, and was disappeared as part of damage control.

Kidnapped Scientist:
TL 8, Russia, Dixie
Got close enough to figuring out parachronics that he was kidnapped and his research destroyed.

Arab Thief:
TL 3, the Caliphate, extended arab golden age alternate
Hired to find out where white star got such cheap cloth from, and got caught.

Medieval Lord:
TL 3, Belgium, Friedrich
Fighting Reich-5 forces and investigating the knights templar leads him into cross-time affairs.

Gunsmith:
TL 5, Austria, Echo (1850)
Was central to a Centrum plot to change history by arming the Austrian empire with bolt action riffles. Picked up as part of infinity's cleanup.

[dcarson]

Part of the setup is deciding on at least one way that they can escape. If they use a different one thats great of course.

Inspired by your comment about lack of natives means no mana. What if there have been enough people on Coventry long enough that it starts to develop mana. So they can stumble across a small area of low mana instead of the normal no mana.

[Rocket Man]

Hidden Agenda: Employee who believes that Van Zandt's retirement was faked and that he's been exiled to Coventry as part of a coup. The employee in question deliberately did something to get himself exiled and has been investigating.

Note that if the above is TRUE, VZ might actually be part of the breakout group ... and give the group a powerful motivation to keep from falling back into Infinity's hands!

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Part of the setup is deciding on at least one way that they can escape.

.

Yeah, this first.

As GM you can decree that the I-Cops guarding the special projector/conveyor combo do Something Stupid or there]s an Unknown Exit but without one of these sorts of things I wouldn't know how to begin escaping Coventry.

[ericthered]

The escape method I've been imagining is sneaking onto an outgoing conveyor. This gives three stages to the adventure:

1) getting into the fortress. Methods include: Digging in, Subterfuge, Taking out a sentry, or just plain sneaking in are all possible. multiple routes for different people are also an option.

2) Getting onto a conveyour. This pretty much means either posing as the guards going back or smuggling in as supplies.

3) Escaping once in the landing area. This is not something that will be super easy, but its also super fun, super messy, and as its the last part of the adventure, failure is probably an option.

[dataweaver]

I’d also ask what they intend to do after escaping. Are they going to be on the run from the I-Cops until they get recaptured or killed, or do they have plans to clear their name (if they were sent to Coventry under false charges) or find a sanctuary where the I-Cops won’t touch them?

[Michael Cule]

Some of the proposed characters sound like people ISWAT would recruit if they felt they could trust them so you need to give slightly stronger reasons for them to be sent to Coventry. Which would also be the reason they want to leave so badly, presumably.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Nate Caudell and/or Mollie Bean:

TL: 5 (Dixie-IX, "Turtledove")

Reason For Exile: Discovered the existence of what they believe to be "time travel from the future" when they uncovered Reich 5 infiltrators in their former-Echo. Deemed Mostly-Harmless-But-Knows-Too-Much with generally insubordinate personality profiles due to participating enthusiastically in what they refer to as the (successful) 2nd American Revolution and the results of potential-recruit interviews.

Abilities: Both are battle-hardened soldiers who saw Gettysburg, took wounds, and can deal very well with the trials of battle and major environmental hardships. Both are very, very familiar with standard TL 5 gear, and cross-trained with standard TL 7 weapons and military supplies (freeze-dried coffee, MREs, etc). Bean is an experienced prostitute, and Caudell is an experienced and fully-literate schoolteacher.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The escape method I've been imagining is sneaking onto an outgoing conveyor. This gives three stages to the adventure:

1) getting into the fortress. Methods include: Digging in, Subterfuge, Taking out a sentry, or just plain sneaking in are all possible. multiple routes for different people are also an option.

2) Getting onto a conveyour. This pretty much means either posing as the guards going back or smuggling in as supplies.

3) Escaping once in the landing area. This is not something that will be super easy, but its also super fun, super messy, and as its the last part of the adventure, failure is probably an option.

<shrug>Okay, you're going with "The I-Cops are stupid.". Your game, do what you like.

<edit> Let me engage my "Tact" module and try again.

IMHO you seem to be setting the bar quite low. I could design an IW set-up where none of these things would ever work and in a default IW setting I would expect he I-Cops to have done such. This was part of why I was curious about how you were expecting your PCs to do it.

About the only things I could see working would be for one of the PCs to develop psionic Mind Control powers after he was sent to Coventry or for some special sort of Nexus Portal or Shift Realm to (at least temporarily) appear.

These last two would avoid your apparently desired last stage.

I can also say that if I were a PC I would try anything except shooting my way out of the terminal once I got off Coventry. It's be another of those things I would expect never to work.