White Court NPCs and not being super akward

[Jancarius]

Turns out I may have been somewhat over worried in my ex's reactions.... It wasn't the WCV, but she did hit on one the mercs working for him pretty hard without a problem.

[devonapple]

Turns out I may have been somewhat over worried in my ex's reactions.

But now you know! And knowing is half the battle.

How do you guys handle 'long distance' social challenges?   IE, Antonio starts a smear campaign claiming that Lucian is a pedophile/murderer/arsonist/jaywalker.  Now I assume this would induce social stress on Lucian, but how does he 'counter' it?

I think for situations like this, you "zoom out" the scale of the conflict. Make each exchange more like a day or a week. Each player gets a turn during each exchange. That means Lucian makes a defense roll against Antonio's smear campaign. Maybe Lucian's associates also help, either by digging up dirt on Antonio, breaking a few legs, hacking his finances, finding out why Antonio is doing this, whatever, so long as they are making rolls and participating in the conflict. Don't feel obligated to turn any of those exchanges into full-blown scenes - just count the conflict solely in terms of the adversarial Antonio:Lucian relationship, and only use their Social Stress tracks.

However, if your players have a lot of irons in the fire, and end up in a lot of small-scale Conflicts during the long-term smear campaign which would count as clearing out the Social Stress tracks, you may just want to play the smear campaign as a Conflict for Consequence: don't worry about dealing Social Stress - make the players roll to keep Lucian from taking a straight Social Consequence.

[Jancarius]

Okay, so last session went pretty good.  The party has now found out that 2 of their number has been specifically targeted by Antonio.  Antonio has offered Sheridan a reward, that he doesn't much think he'll actually take, if he kills Melody for him.  Lucian, the one who actually cut off his brothers head, he wants to drag out and make suffer.  While normally White Courts are fine doing a sustained subtle manipulation war, Antonio is pretty much in the white court version of seeing red, and is barely holding back from just kicking in Lucian's door with a grenade launcher and blowing him to hell.

I intended to make this a case of "okay, the pressure's on, now you guys need to use social skills to counter his manipulations and smear campaigns, and then track him down and kill him."  First part, so far so good, but the party has decided killing him is a bad idea, cause it will just draw more White Court attention to themselves.  Which might be a fair enough assumption.  So now Melody is looking into how she can fake her death.  The paintomancer (Thaumaturge) wants to try and create a 'replica' of Melody out of ectoplasm and then have Sheridan kill it.  What kind of pitfalls, checks, flaws, and successes do you guys see in this plan?

[devonapple]

So now Melody is looking into how she can fake her death.  The paintomancer (Thaumaturge) wants to try and create a 'replica' of Melody out of ectoplasm and then have Sheridan kill it.  What kind of pitfalls, checks, flaws, and successes do you guys see in this plan?

Creating a convincing enough ectoplasmic replica will require excellent anatomical knowledge. First stop may be to find a sympathetic special effects technician to help design the illusion, if it's just to stage the kill. And even then, anyone with The Sight can see right through it.

That said, making a human-sized Ectoplasmic body should be a basic 5-shift Conjuration for a no frills mundane person lasting however you determine to be the default duration (until sunset/sunrise being a good one).

Add extra shifts to make it harder to see through it (1 shift = +1 to the difficulty).

*For 2 shifts each, you can add basic Aspects to maintain the deception: these Aspects would help define the Construct and allow it to make simple Declarations. For 4 shifts it can instead be an Aspect that can be tagged once for free, in case it becomes a Conflict between the "evidence" and an investigator. It should have at least one 4-shift Aspect "Clone of Melody."

Also, you may want to incorporate some of the victim's actual blood so that a Dexter-style trophy can be "taken."

Also, I can't imagine Antonio will blindly trust his would-be henchman, so Sheridan will likely need to prepare to withstand rigorous mental/psych/emotional assault to convince the WCV that the deed was carried out as agreed. Unless the plan is to fool Sheridan, too. And that is assuming Antonio doesn't insist on seeing/touching/desecrating the body.

* this is from a set of Construct guidelines we developed on the board, and these rules are not canon except insofar as 2 shifts seems to be equivalent to a level of complexity in the basic Conjuration guidelines, enough for a basic animating force.

[Jancarius]

For an ectoplasmic replica like that, would it still fool him on initial examination, as long as the time limit hadn't passed?

[devonapple]

For an ectoplasmic replica like that, would it still fool him on initial examination, as long as the time limit hadn't passed?

If the WCV has no magical senses, fails the Investigation check to determine its true nature, and has no other Stunts or powers that could plausibly penetrate the ruse, then yes, the Conjured corpse should fool him on initial examination.

To be safe, the Ritual should be loaded with enough shifts in Complexity that nobody other then a deity (or a character with a lot of CSI Aspects and Fate Points to burn) would see through it: pick Superb or higher and then add 5 shifts to that (so at least 10 shifts to make it extremely convincing).

Unless you want to handle the scene some other way, that is.

[BumblingBear]

I would have made the WCV of the despair type... and then roleplayed trying to get my x to commit suicide.

Far less awkward and possibly therapeutic.

[Jancarius]

The White Court WAS made into a despair type. 

[BumblingBear]

The White Court WAS made into a despair type. 

Sorry.  I didn't read the whole thread.  I suck.