I've been STing a game with two other players for abut a month right now. I've tend to find that as an ST, I'm good with some social situations and good with combat, but infiltration missions and stories tend to be haphazard and bad with me. So I'm looking for ideas and assistance with something that may be planned for my group's next upcoming session.

Currently, they are being asked by a Setite to fulfill a "Ventrue Grocery List". They'll have to find the blood of several people around the city to meet the demands of this ventrue and any other assorted vampires at a small soiree he wil be throwing.

So far, I have it down that, reasonably, there's three options for the players:

1) Kipnap the people and dump them at some sort of location (like a blood bank or a blood drive car ran by the ventrue)

2) Try to break into a hospital and research for the names of the people to see if they have donated blood and where their blood samples may be stored (to avoid the whole kidnapping issue)

3) They refuse the job and make an enemy of the setite.

I can handle working with options 1 and 3, but if they end up doing some form of option 2, I'm looking to get ideas on how to effectively run an infiltration type of setting where they would have to break into a hospital, hack teir computer, and try to retrieve blood samples from blood drives by the potential targets. I'm kind of waondering, how many obstacles and wandering security guards to throw in their way, how many minor annoyances in the hospital should they run afoul, what extra sorts of sub-mission/things could they do, how to add tension to the computer hacking scene, etc.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:16, Wed 30 May 2007.

Usually real life examples work well for this.  How often do you see security guards wandering around a hospital?  Not very.

A major issue for the PCs would be going unnoticed.  How large is your town?  Accordingly, how large would the hospital be?  If it's, say, Sacred Heart-sized, your PCs are going to stick out.  Period.  That can be a fun little twist.

Most hospitals also lock all doors but the ER entrace after 9 or 10 pm--then alarm them.  No one's gonna break in without the cops knowing.  Similarly, visitation hours ar often limited except for the very ill's next-of-kin.  So the PCs will have trouble explaining their presence unless someone IS gravely ill--or at least faking it.  Being dead is considered a clinical emergency, after all, so that might not be hard.

As far as in-hospital drama, perhaps someone left a witness?  Or the victim they thought was dead survived and is being nursed back to health?  They could recognize a character easily.  Or, if you're feeling sadistic, maybe one of the Primogen is posing as the graveyard-shift doc (hey, free food, man!) and doesn't like the PCs snooping around his turf.

Hacking hospital computers I can't help with.  Most systems have some sort of auto lockout procedure that alerts the police after, say, three failed access attempts.  I'm sure someone else has better ideas int his regard.

Basically, modeling RP situations after real life can be rewarding, but must often be tailored to suit your game.  If this is the entirety of the plot for this chapter, you might wanna add more hazards.  If it's just a smaller deal, then cut back a little.

The first question you have to ask yourself is, "How up to date is my hospital?" Now in days, many hospitals have electronic locks, security cameras and a handful of security on staff in the evenings. That does not even include the inquisitive night shift nurses or Doctors there as well.

If your PCs are actually going to break into the place, you're going to want to determine how many guards you have and what general areas they patrol. To answer this question, you have to ask yourself about your hospital once again. "How big is my hospital, how many floors does it have?" Along with that question, you'll want to have a general idea of where the blood is stored, and plant information for the PCs to find so they know what floor/wing they need to head to.

In the case of a small hospital, perhaps one or two security guards would suffice. Perhaps one is always watching the cameras and the other will patrol a certain area or floor at different intervals.

If you want to totally randomize this, you could roll a die. If it comes out odd, he patrols an odd floor first, allowing the players to sneak passed him for now. However, do not leave everything up to just a roll. You will want to build the suspense of them being caught, after all and if your players know the pattern, that can ruin the fear of "Is he coming!?"

Subtle sounds such as air ducts, footsteps, the rolling of a janitor's cart, patients murmuring from their hospital beds are all good sources of "What was that!?" when people are trying to be sneaky. Use these sounds during your computer hacking scene if you want it to become stressful.

Speaking of air ducts, you will probably want to figure out now if they grant enough room for someone to crawl through and if that answer is yes, just where the entrances and exits are located.

Minor annoyances to consider would be..

Locked doors.

Security cameras. Will the PCs be able to find routes to go around them or must they turn them off?

Chatty nurses who wont leave the station to allow PCs access to a computer and how to lead the chatterboxes away.

Bob the Janitor who is just trying to do his job. What can a Janitor do? Oh I don't know..a wet floor without a wet floor sign. That can allow for a roll for a PC to keep his/her balance or slip and fall. If PC slips, skids or what not across a floor, that's going to cause a loud noise and subsequently draw the attention of hospital staff or even curious patients. Bob the Janitor is also a good source of keys.

Patients. It is a hospital. Some patients hate hospitals. Some may be trying to escape in the dark of night. Others might be paging for a nurse and need aid. Would your PCs have their heart strings pulled and help or will they prey on the weak?

As they are Vampires, you are also going to want to consider what disciplines they have at their disposal and plan ahead.

Sub-quest idea - If there is a mental ward. Consider a Malkavian ghoul or kindred who is locked away and needs to be freed. Once freed, that NPC would owe a boon. This is also a good way to introduce a new player to the story if you had any in the que.

All in all, try to cater this adventure to your PCs skills and they will have a lot more fun, just don't make it too easy.

Just keep all of these things in mind and try to build suspense. Play on their fears, strengths and even some of their weaknesses and I'm sure you'll do fine.

As a general rule of thumb, if you can think up three options that players might take to do, and you detail them all out, the players will come up with a fourth option that would never have occurred to you. This tends to hold true no matter how many options you can think up and detail out.

(To make it even more general, this applies to life, too. No matter how you think someone else might react to some kind of complex situation, and you try to plan for all the contingencies, they'll end up doing something else entirely.)

On the flip side, the beauty of GMing is that you don't have to know how to solve the problem you've given to the players. If you have good players, they will do it for you - after all, that's their job in the game.

Well it has been a while, but I finally ran the session with my player, yes singular, and we arrived at an interesting point. We opted to find blood, but instea dof stealign it from ahospital, we decided to hijack a blood-drive for our own nefarious purposes and currently the PC is in the process of coordinating several NPCs into position to steal as much blood as possible during a wonderful spontaneous outburst of charity from humanity. All in all, not a bad plan. Now he just has to make sure he doesn't piss off too many power-players with his plan.