Mischief & Miscreants Notes

Mischief & Miscreants

Campaign Info:
The missions given to the party will be mostly for-profit endeavors; the party members are not heroes.

The campaign will be heist-based, and take place entirely within the city of Skyreach.  Leaving the city will not be an option for any of the party members.

Altered Rules:
1) Character knowledge doesn't require a roll.  Characters are assumed to take 10 on any knowledge check to recall information, and will be offered knowledge by the DM if there are extraordinary circumstances their character would be aware of.  Knowledge skills can be actively used (and rolled) to research while having access to a relevant library or tome, or to attempt to gain an advantage in a situation with justification.

2) The backgrounds offered for the setting will be non-standard, as a large portion of the backgrounds available in the PHB are a poor fit for the setting I'm trying to run.  Players are encouraged to determine their own background story and work with me to pick appropriate proficiencies, equipment and character bonus for their background.  However, I do require that the story somehow end with them ending up living in the "upper slums", either rising up from lower classes or falling from grace to the now impoverished middle class.

3) The characters have worked together in the past on a handful of missions, and have rapport at the start of the game with the local Thieve's Guild... if one were to call it that.  Players will start at level 3, and will have an extra item or two at game start (to be determined in discussion with me).  Honestly though, don't expect anything too extravagant for the extra items... they'll be handy, but not world shatteringly so.

4) A unit (be it player, NPC, item, magic spell, flying pants, et al) will only roll dice for a skill when taking an action to do so.  Otherwise, it's assumed they are using the "passive" value of the skill. Example: When sneaking past a guard, a player makes a Stealth check against the Passive Perception of the guard.  They successfully sneak past, but trip an alarm when entering a room.  The guard enters the room and makes a Perception check to find the player, which is made against the Passive Stealth of the player (to represent their general ability to hide and not be noticed).  Passive skill values are 10 + normal modifier for trained skills, or 8 + normal modifier for untrained skills.  If you would normally have advantage on a skill, that provides +2 to the passive rating, and disadvantage provides a similar -2.

4b) Rule 4 means that I will not be asking for Perception checks unless a person is explicitly spending actions during their turns to try to find things (read as: moving half speed through an area). In all other circumstances, I'll compare your Passive Perception to streamline the process.

5) A passive version of a skill cannot be used when actively making a check, so no asking if you can use Passive Perception when you roll a 2 on a Perception check.

6) Combat is intended to be a last resort, and killing is typically not a good idea in any circumstance.  The party will be actively annoying powerful people in the city over the course of the game, and forcing those powers to find new people to hire would likely find the party hanging by their neck in a cellar as they're being bled out into a bucket.

Setting:
Skyreach, "The City in the Clouds":
Nestled in the crater of an inactive volcano, Skyreach is a city reserved for the upper echelons of the kingdom's society.  A city of imports, the money that flows into the city is primarily through the coffers of the elite that live there. Travel into and out of the city is done via portals that link to other key areas of the kingdom.  Doing so requires payment of a tariff as well as a valid permit provided by a member of the Duke's cabinet, which is typically purchased for a large sum of money.  As such, everything in town is more expensive, and usually only those with the best goods or the deepest pockets are allowed access to the town to ply their goods.

There are a multitude of housing districts, with some houses repurposed as lavish shops for those that live nearby.  Of those districts, there are small housing areas reserved for singular racial groups (including the guards posted therein), mixed-race upper districts, two pleasure districts, and four slums (two upper, two lower).  There are rumors of a group that live within the honeycomb of caves that the city tapped into as an easy sewer system, but if so they have done a good job staying hidden.

The kingdom's law system is LN, promoting unity of the kingdom above all else.  However, Skyreach is ripe with corruption, running a LE system inside of its walls.  It doesn't matter what crime you commit, but how influential the person you have wronged is and how much they're willing to pay to make you suffer. Travel between districts requires a permit if done through legimate channels, to prevent "unwanted" from entering.

Three years ago, the upper class of the city pushed for enough changes to the legal system to fracture the middle class.  The upper third quickly got richer, becoming something of a "lower upper class" that is locally referred to as the "Raised" class.  The lower two thirds however became the new "Lower" class, with anyone in the old lower class being referred to as the "Forgotten".  Forgotten were forced into slavery (wage based or actual), into other cities (paying years of their life in servitude to get out of Skyreach), or into the streets where they were killed by the local guards.

The city pretends to be run by the local Duke, who is the brother of the King.  However, the Duke is more than content to simply stay in his keep and enjoy the pleasures offered to him by the leaders of the upper class while they actually run the show, pretending to be part of his cabinet of advisors.  He hasn't stepped outside of the walls of his keep's grounds for at least five years.