BakuDreamer
commented
7 years ago If you're familiar with Dorohedoro ( ドロヘドロ ) this could be a lot like ' Blue Night ' The purpose of the masque is for actors, especially magic users, to find an individual partner set up secret contracts.
It's only possible on this one night every five years. No one knows who anyone else is once it starts and the costumes are on. You wouldn't recognize your best friend. But you have to find the person you want to partner with and get to the Devil's Hall and sign the contract before the night ends, and prevent anyone from partnering with someone you wanted instead of you. People can get killed doing this. People wind up making contracts with the wrong person. People can be tricked or forced into contracts. The contracts are a lot like exchanging true names / soul keys.
IT'S BLUE NIGHT
On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 11:35 AM, cryptomancer-actual < notifications@github.com> wrote:
Kicking the tires on this idea. As always, any feedback welcome. Here's the high level overview in bullet points:
Players are tasked with committing some type of espionage during an event called the Crypto-Masquerade, which is a upscale masquerade ball, but instead of everyone wearing masks, guests have their faces encrypted (with the Dissemble spell) and their voices encrypted (with the Babel spell).
Every attendee has a two small parchments they can show to other people. One of them has the keyphrase used to encrypt their face written on it. The other has the keyphrase used to encrypt their voice on it. If they want someone to be able to understand them when they talk (instead of hearing jibberish), or actually see their face for what it is (instead of an ever shifting mask), they will show this parchment to that audience.
It is intended to be a fun event where the most powerful, wealthy, and well-connected people in a kingdom can have a single night removed from all the politics, scheming, and responsibility that comes with their names/positions. However, the event always ends up being very political, and very "schemey." Even better, it can be easily infiltrated by uninvited guests (including our players), because everyone's face and voice is magically masked.
There are also important secret meetings taking place in rooms that have their entrances encrypted (using the Maze spell). These are places where serious business and political negotiations are happening, away from the eyes and ears of people who might otherwise pry. You'll only be able to find these rooms, let alone enter them, if you know the keyphrase that was used to encrypt the entrance.
From a learning perspective, this adventure will heavily feature symmetric crypto (keyphrases), asymmetric crypto (true names), utilizing assymetric crypto to exchange keyphrases in an environment full of eavesdroppers, utilizing out of band channels to exchange keyphrases when true names aren't know, leveraging brute force techniques to break weak keyphrases, etc. This adventure might be more interesting if the use of shards is limited, so the focus can be on secrets and secure channels, instead of network considerations.
From a project management standpoint, here are some requests:
Intrigue: we need some court intrigue, here. It should be generic enough where players can adapt it to their custom setting, but specific enough where players can actually use it. For example, the players might learn how one merchant is undercutting another merchant, and leverage that information to either their own advantage or to gain a favor. So in this case, just need a quick (one sentence) description of 1) merchant A, 2) merchant B, 3) what the specific secret is, and 4) ways for players to leverage it. I'm thinking 4 or 5 of these might be interesting.
Secret meetings: we need some awesome business/political meeting topics that might be fun for players to learn about or even influence with secret information. Again, they should be generic enough to adapt to any setting, but still concrete. For example, perhaps a meeting is about establishing a non-aggression pact between two neighboring fiefdoms (fiefdom A and fiefdom B), because fiefdom A is potentially considering attacking fiefdom C (who normally expects military support from fiefdom B, due to treaty).
Map: a rough map of the ballroom, the secret meeting rooms, a security operation center, and any other interesting places where players might get into trouble, would be very welcome..
Interesting details: what are the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of a masquerade party? Are their musical performances or magic tricks? What's the food like? Paintings or sculptures adorning the hallways? We can use these details to provide the game-master running this adventure some stock text to describe the setting and really bring it to life for players.
Tension: the players aren't on the invite list. They are not supposed to be there. However, to get guests to share information, the players need to let their guard down, one guest at a time, because no one will talk to them if there aren't willing to talk back (in cleartext). This means that the more information the players glean, and the more contacts they make, the more likely it is that they will be discovered by security and thrown out of the party (or into a dungeon... perhaps the Networked Dungeon). Anyways, how do we create this tension for the game master so they can have fun with it and make the adventure tense and exciting?
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ksedivyhaley
cryptomancer-actual
Kicking the tires on this idea. As always, any feedback welcome. Here's the high level overview in bullet points:
Players are tasked with committing some type of espionage during an event called the Crypto-Masquerade, which is a upscale masquerade ball, but instead of everyone wearing masks, guests have their faces encrypted (with the Dissemble spell) and their voices encrypted (with the Babel spell).
Every attendee has a two small parchments they can show to other people. One of them has the keyphrase used to encrypt their face written on it. The other has the keyphrase used to encrypt their voice on it. If they want someone to be able to understand them when they talk (instead of hearing jibberish), or actually see their face for what it is (instead of an ever shifting mask), they will show this parchment to that audience.
It is intended to be a fun event where the most powerful, wealthy, and well-connected people in a kingdom can have a single night removed from all the politics, scheming, and responsibility that comes with their names/positions. However, the event always ends up being very political, and very "schemey." Even better, it can be easily infiltrated by uninvited guests (including our players), because everyone's face and voice is magically masked.
There are also important secret meetings taking place in rooms that have their entrances encrypted (using the Maze spell). These are places where serious business and political negotiations are happening, away from the eyes and ears of people who might otherwise pry. You'll only be able to find these rooms, let alone enter them, if you know the keyphrase that was used to encrypt the entrance.
From a learning perspective, this adventure will heavily feature symmetric crypto (keyphrases), asymmetric crypto (true names), utilizing assymetric crypto to exchange keyphrases in an environment full of eavesdroppers, utilizing out of band channels to exchange keyphrases when true names aren't know, leveraging brute force techniques to break weak keyphrases, etc. This adventure might be more interesting if the use of shards is limited, so the focus can be on secrets and secure channels, instead of network considerations.
From a project management standpoint, here are some requests:
Intrigue: we need some court intrigue, here. It should be generic enough where players can adapt it to their custom setting, but specific enough where players can actually use it. For example, the players might learn how one merchant is undercutting another merchant, and leverage that information to either their own advantage or to gain a favor. So in this case, just need a quick (one sentence) description of 1) merchant A, 2) merchant B, 3) what the specific secret is, and 4) ways for players to leverage it. I'm thinking 4 or 5 of these might be interesting.
Secret meetings: we need some awesome business/political meeting topics that might be fun for players to learn about or even influence with secret information. Again, they should be generic enough to adapt to any setting, but still concrete. For example, perhaps a meeting is about establishing a non-aggression pact between two neighboring fiefdoms (fiefdom A and fiefdom B), because fiefdom A is potentially considering attacking fiefdom C (who normally expects military support from fiefdom B, due to treaty).
Map: a rough map of the ballroom, the secret meeting rooms, a security operation center, and any other interesting places where players might get into trouble, would be very welcome..
Interesting details: what are the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of a masquerade party? Are their musical performances or magic tricks? What's the food like? Paintings or sculptures adorning the hallways? We can use these details to provide the game-master running this adventure some stock text to describe the setting and really bring it to life for players.
Tension: the players aren't on the invite list. They are not supposed to be there. However, to get guests to share information, the players need to let their guard down, one guest at a time, because no one will talk to them if there aren't willing to talk back (in cleartext). This means that the more information the players glean, and the more contacts they make, the more likely it is that they will be discovered by security and thrown out of the party (or into a dungeon... perhaps the Networked Dungeon). Anyways, how do we create this tension for the game master so they can have fun with it and make the adventure tense and exciting?