Play Aids

Use this page when you need to launch or steady a modern campaign quickly.

Mission Brief Template

Every good modern brief should answer these questions before the team touches the door:

What are we actually being told?
What do we suspect is being hidden from us?
Who must come out alive?
What evidence matters enough to risk the room for?
Who inside is not part of the fight but can still complicate it?
How many believable entry points do we have?
Why is command nervous?

If the brief does not contain friction, it is not a modern brief yet.

Escalation Track

Use escalation to show the city learning.

0-1: local resistance only
2-3: cameras, fallback routes, simple traps
4-5: layered deception, reinforced rooms, active burn plans
6+: mixed-faction cooperation, elite defenders, and false narratives prepared before the raid begins

Escalation should not just make fights harder. It should make the whole city feel more defensive, more polished, and more willing to lie.

Faction Cheat Sheet

Response Side

NIS: find the hidden layer, then cut it out cleanly
NFP: keep the arrest lawful enough to survive daylight
SIB: own the graph, not just the room
TRG: win the threshold before time kills the objective
Null Halo: dominate the first room when ordinary force is no longer enough
Blue Mercy: get the living out before the city decides they are expendable

Hostile Side

Marrow Wake: trade bodies for fear and time
Latchwork: use familiarity, noise, and clutter as terrain
Followers: turn pain, care, shame, and confusion into control
Charter Wardens: make the site feel expensive, layered, and deniable

Rename Checklist

If you later rebrand any of this material, change names in this order:

faction names
rank titles
city and district names
legal institutions
campaign codename

Keep the structural roles and faction functions. That is the part doing the real work.

Table Reminder

If the campaign ever starts drifting toward "just kill everyone," add one of these immediately:

a living witness
a child or elder inside the panic room
an evidence timer
a command order demanding live capture
a media leak that punishes indiscriminate force