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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Arcteryx on September 04, 2010, 03:33:09 AM
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Any ideas or commentary on how CCTV's would work on
a) creatures of the nevernever
b) vamps (any court)
c) wizards (besides those hexing them on purposely)
d) fae
e) fairies like Toots
f) non-fay / not-mortal beasties - werewolves, ghouls
Running a game in London where things are under surveillance and I wondered what kind of effect that would have!
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The images would show up. They may be staticy from interference, and anything with the proper mojo can hex, but they'd still be there. The wizards would accidentally hex most, which is a good thing in this case.
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The video footage of the loup garou is watchable, but hard to see...very fuzzy, glitchy and grainy. But it works.
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Easiest way to handle it is to make it carry about as much weight as a reasonably respectable member of the community suddenly claiming to see vampires and werewolves. Like the mayor or police chief for example. Basically that translates to making it just fuzzy enough that if people want to believe, they can. But it's absolutely not a smoking gun. Can't be.
One interesting side effect of this will be "gremlins" living in certain supernaturally active areas, at least as far as the people who maintain the camera system are concerned.
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Lanir, I do like that approach to it - seeing it is one thing, reporting it is another...
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Also, it's just a camera, so it won't see through human guise. So for the most part, it won't catch anything out of the ordinary, unless there happens to be a fight in front of one... at which point it will likely get hexed into oblivion.
James
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Hmm... Well I just worked out a storyline for my game's first major plot that involves supernatural areas of darkness all over the city and people disappearing into them.
The way the PCs are to find out about this happening involves one girl disappearing into a "dark-spot" as she is walking down a sidewalk next to a bank which catches her disappearance on CCTV... So I was assuming that it would work even though normally, something like that would indeed hex electronics.
Then again, if I had "dark-spots" all over the city hexing electronics, that would change the tone of the happenings as the mundanes would be more interested and it would seem less spooky.
So while what's been said so far is a good rule of thumb, I try to remember my friend Danny's approach to RPing when it comes to high story games like Fate-based DFRPG...
"If it looks good for the movie..." go with it. :)
This works best on things like these where it's a gray area, as opposed to breaking the maxims of the verse which I try not to ever do...
And I know 'Science fails' is a maxim, which is why I say...
But CCTV has captured supernatural juju in the books... So fair game imo to do the same.
Just like everyone said, make it sketchy.
In mine, no one will be able to tell what happens. The girl just walks into a dark area (maybe some glitchy/static noise) and is...gone. She doesn't come out the other side. Period.
So it still fits the maxim and it fits what I need... and it looks good for the movie.
Good luck!
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a) Most creatures of the NeverNever don't have an actual body. They use ectoplasm to make something that looks and feels solid - but isn't - or are fully incorporeal spirits. Anything fully incorporeal would not show in a camera at all. Anything that makes a body out of excoplasm might show in a camera - but whether its guise works or it looks like a walking mass of goo is up to you.
b) Most vamps have human guises and flesh masks. They'd look fully human. The Black Court is both fully supernatural and even one of them is 2/3 as metaphysically strong as the Loup Garou. Having 3-4 of them walking together? The cameras would hardly work at all.
c) Hexing delicate electronics (which cameras are) is a 2 on the hexing scale. Even if a wizard does not deliberately hex, throwing a 6-shift spell in the same zone would totally fry the cameras. If you have a great sorceress or senior council wizard around throwing 15-shift spells...
Also, remember that surveillance systems store their info electronically or magnetically as well. Maybe a wizard's presence would only degrade the camera's function instead of burning in as the wizard walks in but in an already stored image, the degradation from magic would be additive; half an hour with a wizard in the building might well erase the cassette/disk/hard drive.
d) Most fae can look human. Even some Ogres can do it.
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Depends on what the "dark spots" are. They may not be close enough, or "strong" enough to effect the cameras. The cameras may be outside of their "event horizon"
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Anything that makes a body out of excoplasm might show in a camera - but whether its guise works or it looks like a walking mass of goo is up to you.
Don't think that's ever hinted at. Every example I can recall about something growing using ectoplasm has the stuff being fully real and a part of it's body until it dies or gets banished. Ectoplasm is pretty much treated the same way as cells and blood are, it just comes from the Nevernever. It's just a building material that wraps around spirit the way flesh wraps around bone. It isn't any more or less real than flesh, it just requires a spirit to anchor it to our world, otherwise it turns to slime and evaporates away.
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Running a game in London where things are under surveillance and I wondered what kind of effect that would have!
Maybe they all show up normally, and there are people paid to get rid of such footage. The questions then arise as to what exactly they are paid, and who by....
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I've noted it as a point to bring up to the players to see how they want it handled; our group has picked London and it has one of the most extensive CCTV networks on the planet, so to not address it would be careless. I'll bring up some of the points raised here and see what they dream up themselves...
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I'd say that although some of the pictures might be, for example, hexed to the point of uselessness, many others will be clear enough to see what is going on. However, there will always be just enough static and/or interference to lend credence to the skeptics who claim it's just a hoax. I.e., the argument would be that:
1) Obviously supernatural stuff doesn't exist, so it clearly must be a hoax.
2) See that static over here? Wait a moment. Right ... THERE! See? That's caused by the editing software...
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Actually, thinking about it, given the quality of the CCTV footage that is trotted out whenever they are trying to track down criminals, I suspect that supernatural creatures could do a song and dance routine in front of a camera and still be interpreted as just a student prank...
And now I have a mental image of a Loup Garou in a straw boater and a walking cane singing "Hello my baby, hello my darling, hello my rag-time gal!"
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I've noted it as a point to bring up to the players to see how they want it handled; our group has picked London and it has one of the most extensive CCTV networks on the planet, so to not address it would be careless. I'll bring up some of the points raised here and see what they dream up themselves...
A techno investigator might even be able to track bad guys by finding out which cameras got hexed the night before...
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And now I have a mental image of a Loup Garou in a straw boater and a walking cane singing "Hello my baby, hello my darling, hello my rag-time gal!"
Should'nt it be one of those frog demons from the first book?
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Got around to watching National Geographic's Megacities last night, their episode on London, and there's an inside view of the London traffic control center and the War Room that has all the CCTV feeds. This is the authority that monitors traffic in London's metropolitan areas and its network of roads and highways, and they adjust timings on lights and signals to relieve congestion and traffic build-up.
Anyways, long story short - their video feeds are Crystal Clear - nothing grainy or small screened about it - it was really great quality.
It made me remember a story by Charles Strauss about a special unit called The Laundry, which was able to use the surveillance cameras in Milton Keynes to transmit the paralytic gaze of a basilisk. Pretty awesome stuff.
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It made me remember a story by Charles Strauss about a special unit called The Laundry, which was able to use the surveillance cameras in Milton Keynes to transmit the paralytic gaze of a basilisk. Pretty awesome stuff.
It's Charles Stross, and there are 3 books in the series - "The Attrocity Archive" (which contains the story you're thinking of - "The Concrete Jungle"), "The Jennifer Morgue" and "The Fuller Memorandum" - plus a couple of short stories available online. They are great books and well worth a read.
Anyway, if the cameras are all crystal clear then you're back to either the supernatural not showing up very well (which would cause suspicion in and of itself); the supernatural community being very careful and discreet; or someone removing the footage before it can be made public - a secret government department would probably not be out of place for this purpose.
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You do have the option to alter the city somewhat. Depending on the preferences of you and your players that's always a possibility. A city with no alterations would be everyone trying to roleplay people they know doing their 9 to 5 jobs and watching TV at night. When you're to the point of adding wizards, several flavors of vampire and more kinds of furry thing than you can shake a stick at, it's not a great stretch to redefine the video resolution. :)
One other note, the graininess and static of the video in the novels is caused by the target of the videos being supernatural, or that's how I read it. No one involved seemed to expect the video to be that ambiguous.
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Given the way the Dresdenverse is written, it might be more likely that a city with a lot of CCTV coverage like London, may have an Aspect like "Big Brother is always watching". If hexing (deliberate or accidental) surveillance electronics causes the nearest police unit to check out the cause of the disturbance, the supernatural may have more wary of using their powers there.
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Given the way the Dresdenverse is written, it might be more likely that a city with a lot of CCTV coverage like London, may have an Aspect like "Big Brother is always watching". If hexing (deliberate or accidental) surveillance electronics causes the nearest police unit to check out the cause of the disturbance, the supernatural may have more wary of using their powers there.
That's pretty elegant - and it sets the tone for the setting, but I did some looking and characters may not have all that much to worry about:
According to a Liberal Democrat analysis, in London "Police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any." A 2008 Report by UK Police Chiefs concluded that only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. In London, a Metropolitan Police report showed that in 2008 only one crime was solved per 1000 cameras. (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television))
Still, the threat of a looming Big Brother somewhere in the background is pretty attractive...
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Note that a number of the above ideas are not necessarily contradictory. For example, start with the understanding that stuff of the supernatural doesn't play nice with others (ie, images of supernatural creatures will be grainy at the very best). Next, assume that in the Dresdenified London, there is a significant amount of supernatural activity playing havoc with the comprehensive CCTV coverage there. I imagine that at first the police was very responsive to irregularities caught by the cameras. Of course, responding every time the cameras went white with static would probably tire out the response units pretty quickly. Now -- years after it's inception -- the authorities have the system set to merely log most of the irregularities, sending an actual response only to the most serious cases. So perhaps the aspect would be something along the lines of "Big Brother is always watching ... and sometimes even takes notice." If a wizard blows up a camera on an otherwise calm night, it will probably be responded to by a a couple of technicians in a truck. If, on the other hand, the emergency lines are ringing, the surveillance folks might be alerted ... and they might start seeing things that bring up questions -- either in the form of odd stuff occuring or in patterns of CCTVs suddenly going white with static.
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So perhaps the aspect would be something along the lines of "Big Brother is always watching ... and sometimes even takes notice." If a wizard blows up a camera on an otherwise calm night, it will probably be responded to by a a couple of technicians in a truck. If, on the other hand, the emergency lines are ringing, the surveillance folks might be alerted ... and they might start seeing things that bring up questions -- either in the form of odd stuff occuring or in patterns of CCTVs suddenly going white with static.
That may be the case. Or it could be the case that the police keeps up the pressure and the city becomes an unfriendly place to supernaturals and they move away.
You could combine "Big Brother is always watching" with "Velvet glove, iron fist" for a more police state feel. Maybe "Rendition Protocols" to simulate the effect that even supernaturals are not safe from the mortal governments. Maybe the government decided to make an example of the various courts and rendition a Red Court noble.
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That may be the case. Or it could be the case that the police keeps up the pressure and the city becomes an unfriendly place to supernaturals and they move away.
You could combine "Big Brother is always watching" with "Velvet glove, iron fist" for a more police state feel. Maybe "Rendition Protocols" to simulate the effect that even supernaturals are not safe from the mortal governments. Maybe the government decided to make an example of the various courts and rendition a Red Court noble.
This assumes that the government as an entity is even aware of the Supernatural, let alone the various supernatural faction. While it might be interesting to play in a game in which this was the case (I think it would look somewhat like the X-Men), the 'vanilla' Dresdenverse does not include clued-in governments. That we are aware of. Individuals within the government, yes, but governments as a whole, no.
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I've put this question on my list to ask my players when we get into our setting creation - what is the government's awareness of the supernatural? And what is their response to it? How long have they known for?
Figured I'd let them set the tone on that big decision, but I'll let'm know what the state is in the canon Dresdenverse.
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This assumes that the government as an entity is even aware of the Supernatural, let alone the various supernatural faction. While it might be interesting to play in a game in which this was the case (I think it would look somewhat like the X-Men), the 'vanilla' Dresdenverse does not include clued-in governments. That we are aware of. Individuals within the government, yes, but governments as a whole, no.
I agree that governments as a whole do not appear to be clued in. But departments or divisions of agencies within those governments? A Fringe division of the Department of Homeland Security? A black ops section of the CIA that is in charge of rendition protocols? Afterall, most parts of the government do not have "need to know" of the supernatural.
Should the story break that there is such a group within the government, a small number of individuals takes the fall. Thus it appears that in the "vanilla" Dresdenverse does not include clued-in governments.
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not to derail everything you guys have been up to but the loup garu showed up perfectly clear. it was harry throwing the giga-spell that gave the camera issues.
supernat creatures cause no problem to cameras aside from when they get annoyed and hex.
otherwise i'd wonder how laura raith was a porno star.....
harry was on tv....
other wizards have been photographed.
ghosts have been photographed...
etc. all in the books.
basically as long as it has a physical presence. it's the active magic part that makes things fuzzy. or at least that's how it appears to me.
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supernat creatures cause no problem to cameras aside from when they get annoyed and hex.
Supernatural creatures don't generally hex, it's a mortal magic thing, but good points on the rest.
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"Wizards and some other monsters cause nearby technology to malfunction simply by their presence." (YS11)
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"Wizards and some other monsters cause nearby technology to malfunction simply by their presence." (YS11)
Probably if that monster has a mana static ability; I just did a quick search through Our World and none of the ones listed have that ability, but we all know its far from being an exhaustive listing. Looking forward to reporting back with how my group of players decide to go with this...
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Probably if that monster has a mana static ability; I just did a quick search through Our World and none of the ones listed have that ability, but we all know its far from being an exhaustive listing. Looking forward to reporting back with how my group of players decide to go with this...
i'll be amused to see how they want to run it too. my group prefers "realism" but that definately doesn't mean every group has to roll that way.
also in the new novelett even hand a certain magic creature hexes marcone's camera's at will. not just wizzies can hex.
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also in the new novelett even hand a certain magic creature hexes marcone's camera's at will. not just wizzies can hex.
I never said only wizards hex. I just stated that supernatural creatures don't generally hex. It's an ability you have to buy in the game, unless you're a wizard or some other user of mortal magic, in which case you automatically do it. As Arcteryx pointed out in the post directly before yours, it's an ability called Mana Static.