A Cold War in D&DLand

[Prak]

Yeah, d20 can really only replicate super powered modern stories, at least without so many house rules you should just play something else.

But I don't want a modern game, I want a game about being bad ass spies In a cold war conflict between two magic teched, spell-industrialized super powers.

[Grek]

Eberron would actually be fairly reasonable for the whole Spy vs Spy aspect. It has an incredible clusterfuck of different espionage agencies all trying to pull one over on the others, but the two big ones are House Phiarlan and House Thuranni - who used to be the same organization, but who split during the Shadow Schism over a (possibly fabricated) plot to take over the world. If you wanted spy games, you could do worse than to set your campaign during that confict as agents of some interested third party. Plus, it already has canon magical nukes.

[Lokathor]

In a magical system with actual gods and shit, you can do this with external enforcement, let's say you've got some magical doodad, spell, curse, whatever that enforces a peace between the two superpowers, and will come down hard on whoever breaks it, but not so hard that they can't win.

So... what I'm hearing... is... that we should write in a "The Lady of Pain" type figure.

[Username17]

Yeah, d20 can really only replicate super powered modern stories, at least without so many house rules you should just play something else.

But I don't want a modern game, I want a game about being bad ass spies In a cold war conflict between two magic teched, spell-industrialized super powers.

Might I suggest Shadowrun? Or HERO system? Or even GURPS? Heck, any game system at all that makes the slightest attempt to handle badass spies in the shadow of large organizations.

D&D has a strong melee-focused tactical combat minigame. But its known weaknesses include having an honestly terrible Diplomacy, Stealth, and Disguise system. D&D's skill system is its weakest link, and it is specifically weakest when it comes to questions of subterfuge. Some of that is the flat RNG - a disguise that has any chance of failure at all cannot fool a room with 20 people in it. Some of it is the level and bonus structure, where characters quickly push themselves entirely off the RNG with respect to their earlier selves. But some of that is that the specific rules for Diplomacy and Hide are so awful that people default to magic teaparty.

Now obviously there are even worse choices - Palladium and Runequest also have unworkable stealth and diplomacy and don't even have a decent tactical melee combat minigame. But D&D is obviously and hilariously bad as a choice for a game about spies in a technologically advanced society.

So... what I'm hearing... is... that we should write in a "The Lady of Pain" type figure.

The Lady of Pain is analogous to Law Enforcement agencies forcing crime syndicates to keep their mob wars on the down low. Which isn't like super powers in a cold war at all.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

D&D is an odd case for cold wars where no one escalates to mass population destruction because the masses don't actually have any leverage from their sheer numbers. Actual warfare consists of trying to assassinate the other team's high level champions already.

If you're playing with a group that doesn't realise that then there could just have been an ambient victory by the Cult of Tharizdun some generations back with the result that spilling a large enough volume of blood in a densely packed area opens a gate to let him show up and do bad things to the plane. Which, unless you insist on every plane having representatives of Team Apocalypse, would lead to an understanding to forsake terror tactics and mass killing made easier to swallow by those being militarily ineffective in a superheroes setting like D&D.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well the biggest problem with having the sort of psuedo-nuclear balance necessary for a psuedo-Cold War setting within the D&D paradigm is that the default assumptions of that paradigm already include a plethora of high-level spells and artifacts which are already that-world shattering.

That dramatic climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the wrath of god melts the faces of the Nazis....well an 11th level Conjurer gets to cast that twice a day. So a kingdom where that sort of artifact is going to impact the balance of power kinda has to be a kingdom where wizards don't generally get to 11th level.

[Omegonthesane]

While I honestly didn't know what the fuck I was doing when I tried to run a 3.Tome campaign I had it in my head that the rulers of the two biggest obvious factions were only 12th level and the real architects of the world's misery were only level 13.

Probably should've gone lower than that in retrospect but that'd restrict the uniquely D&Dish stories to tell, and the Wish Economy was an actual plot point.

[Neurosis]

For you, it requires traps, murder, dragons and magical equipment. For me, it requires an ensemble cast of diverse skills undertaking missions that individual characters alone could not accomplish, where they face some form of strong, targeted opposition which must be dealt with, and dealing with it can involve avoiding it, knocking it out, killing it, or befriending it. Breaking into an corporate office building with personal guards and high tech security systems to steal the designs for a plane, and being forced to bluff and fist fight guards is a D&D style adventure to me. Breaking into an enemy factory hidden in the antarctic and having to fight your group's dark mirrors to stop the production of never-before-seen-weapons and super soldiers based on your crew, and save the world, is a D&D style adventure to me. Descending into a long forgotten tomb of an ancient culture, dodging traps, wild creatures, and an opposing force that also wants the magical items there is literally a D&D style adventure and that's what the Tomb Raider games and at least two* Indiana Jones movies are about.

Prak, I think that your definition of a D&D style adventure sounds a whole helluva LOT more like a Shadowrun Shadowrun. Don't get me wrong, in D&D you can totally overcome your opposition by "avoiding it, knocking it out, killing it, or befriending it", it's just that killing it is the default option and the option actually taken at least three out of four times. Your antarctic and forgotten tomb premises definitely sound like D&D adventures to me, but the first example you listed really is straight-up full on Shadowrun.

By the way, which D&D classes or Prestige Classes (besides the obvious Ninja and Rogue) are good at "spy stuff"? I'm trying to imagine what George Smiley in D&D Land's stats would be.

[Prak]

Eberron would actually be fairly reasonable for the whole Spy vs Spy aspect. It has an incredible clusterfuck of different espionage agencies all trying to pull one over on the others, but the two big ones are House Phiarlan and House Thuranni - who used to be the same organization, but who split during the Shadow Schism over a (possibly fabricated) plot to take over the world. If you wanted spy games, you could do worse than to set your campaign during that confict as agents of some interested third party. Plus, it already has canon magical nukes.

In a magical system with actual gods and shit, you can do this with external enforcement, let's say you've got some magical doodad, spell, curse, whatever that enforces a peace between the two superpowers, and will come down hard on whoever breaks it, but not so hard that they can't win.

So... what I'm hearing... is... that we should write in a "The Lady of Pain" type figure.

Well, I was already planning on welding together elements of Eberron and Planescape. Eberron for the magical industry, and one of the super powers is planned to be a sort of "Sigil on the prime material." I even planned on including, well, a figure named The Lady of Pain, but less as this nebulous figure that exists to enforce the setting, and more as a Stalin-esque Lich queen, who earned the title due to disappearing inconvenient people.

D&D is an odd case for cold wars where no one escalates to mass population destruction because the masses don't actually have any leverage from their sheer numbers. Actual warfare consists of trying to assassinate the other team's high level champions already.

If you're playing with a group that doesn't realise that then there could just have been an ambient victory by the Cult of Tharizdun some generations back with the result that spilling a large enough volume of blood in a densely packed area opens a gate to let him show up and do bad things to the plane. Which, unless you insist on every plane having representatives of Team Apocalypse, would lead to an understanding to forsake terror tactics and mass killing made easier to swallow by those being militarily ineffective in a superheroes setting like D&D.

That's an interesting thought. When I started writing, I definitely was looking at the Soviet-American Cold War to understand the concept, but I eventually realized I was paying too much attention to that, and should work on a cold war that makes sense for D&D. Or at least stop looking to the real cold war so much so as to stop myself from making the expies I don't want to have in the setting (even though Holy Town has some similarities to the modern US just because I wanted to lampoon the electoral college, and I'm looking at Ancient Rome for how a government heavily based on a state religion works and... there are some similarities between ancient Rome's state religion and modern US politics...) So while I know that I want there to be WMDs as part of the Cold War thing, I'm also trying to make "A D&D Cold War," and this sort of stuff is good for me to think on.

Well the biggest problem with having the sort of psuedo-nuclear balance necessary for a psuedo-Cold War setting within the D&D paradigm is that the default assumptions of that paradigm already include a plethora of high-level spells and artifacts which are already that-world shattering.

That dramatic climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the wrath of god melts the faces of the Nazis....well an 11th level Conjurer gets to cast that twice a day. So a kingdom where that sort of artifact is going to impact the balance of power kinda has to be a kingdom where wizards don't generally get to 11th level.

Well, that's another reason for me to think on what Omegon brought up. If there is some reason for mass populace killing to be verboten, then the fact that any 11th level Wizard can cast Circle of Death matters a tad less, and the artifact that does it needs to do it in a bigger and better way than the 11th level, or even a 20th level, wizard can.

On the topic of using Shadowrun
My group plays D&D, specifically 3.PF. One of the players is hesitant to bother to learn a new system when he believes he knows how to play a system that works fine, and two are still comparatively new to D&D, and trying to teach them a new system would just fuck them up more. Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I already know how to make whatever character comes into my head in it, and in Shadowrun it takes a lot of book delving and googling just to figure out the basic parts. A friend was going to run SR, and I decided I wanted to play a character based on Rocket Raccoon. As I understood SR, and according to the GM, this was possible, and I figured it out, but it took a shit ton more work and research than it would, for me, in D&D 3.X.

Also, my group is fine with mindcaulking, sandbagging and "well, that hasn't been done in this world, even though nothing prevents it." So.... Iduncare.

By the way, which D&D classes or Prestige Classes (besides the obvious Ninja and Rogue) are good at "spy stuff"? I'm trying to imagine what George Smiley in D&D Land's stats would be.

Off the top of my head- Bard, maybe Cleric, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard, and Warlock. But I'd be genuinely interested in seeing someone play a Paladin in such adventure. Smiley seems like maybe a low level combat class (active duty in WW2) and a few levels of, iunno, maybe Warlock for his D&D Land equivalent.

[Lokathor]

The Lady of Pain is analogous to Law Enforcement agencies forcing crime syndicates to keep their mob wars on the down low. Which isn't like super powers in a cold war at all.

Yeah "externally enforced keeping it under the line" is rather different from the cold war's "self enforced keeping it under the line" in a lot of tonal ways. There's not really the same elements of temptation involved, that maybe if you do it just right you'll manage to go over the line and not get caught.

But it's certainly a lot easier to GM.

and more as a Stalin-esque Lich queen

Fun Stalin Story Time: He kept people in line by having wild drinking parties almost every single day. The basic plan was that if all the top officials are super drunk all the time they can't go off and scheme against you secretly nearly as well. So all the sub level guys just had to try and get their bosses to sign official documents and manage the government while they were at the drunken Stalin parties.

[Username17]

Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons

Burritos are my favorite food, but I don't make or ask for Burrito Ice Cream. I feel like you're taking stubbornness to the point of comedy and I'm not sure what you hope to gain from conversation.

D&D 3.x is probably my favorite system, for a variety of reasons, but none of those reasons are "being remotely good at telling stories about espionage or set in relatively modern/advanced societies." Hell, D&D has severe problems with cities, even if those cities are small medieval affairs that have open sewers and charters from local nobility rather than recognizable civil services and dedicated police forces.

For fuck's sake, you brought up the idea of people playing Clerics in an Espionage Game. That's ridiculous. Having written that down, you should follow that with an apology to the readers for having wasted their damn time or invest in a fucking drum roll so that people can know that it's a cue to laugh out loud. Clerics have many abilities and are one of the most diversely effective classes in Dungeons & Dragons. But one of their few actual limitations is that they are required by law to prominently brandish their faction signifiers every time they use any of their class features, thus making it literally impossible for them to meaningfully engage in "spy stuff."

There is a reason that step six of the Game Design Flow Sheet is "choose a base system." It's because you need a base system that actually handles the characters and events your stories are supposed to contain. Picking a system you're familiar with and then smashing it into genres that it isn't appropriate for is literally 1970s thinking. It was terribe then, and it's terrible now. Stop being terrible.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons

<"System matters" but in 3 paragraphs of condescending vitriol>

It's telling, Frank, that you quoted this bit

Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons

and not this more important bit

My group plays D&D, specifically 3.PF. One of the players is hesitant to bother to learn a new system when he believes he knows how to play a system that works fine, and two are still comparatively new to D&D, and trying to teach them a new system would just fuck them up more.

when condemning someone for deciding they'd rather ram a square peg into a round hole than surgically alter several other people to have square holes instead of round holes.

ETA: And Cleric holy symbols denote cosmic alignment, not political affiliation. You can just have Good and Evil clerics on Team Not-America for different purposes. And that's assuming you're even right about having to brandish the Divine Focus of a spell - the spell component rules appear to imply that you just have to have a focus on your person, that isn't made clear in the slightest by the SRD.

Focus (F)
A focus component is a prop of some sort. Unlike a material component, a focus is not consumed when the spell is cast and can be reused. As with material components, the cost for a focus is negligible unless a price is given. Assume that focus components of negligible cost are in your spell component pouch.

Divine Focus (DF)
A divine focus component is an item of spiritual significance. The divine focus for a cleric or a paladin is a holy symbol appropriate to the character’s faith.

Everything about a lot of Cleric spells requiring you to own and carry a holy symbol - not so much as a solitary syllable about Clerics having to brandish a holy symbol unless using Turn or Rebuke Undead. For all those RAW care your holy symbol could be a surgical implant.

[Mask_De_H]

Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons

<"System matters" but in 3 paragraphs of condescending vitriol>

It's telling, Frank, that you quoted this bit

Also, D&D 3.PF is my personal favorite system, for a variety of reasons

and not this more important bit

My group plays D&D, specifically 3.PF. One of the players is hesitant to bother to learn a new system when he believes he knows how to play a system that works fine, and two are still comparatively new to D&D, and trying to teach them a new system would just fuck them up more.

when condemning someone for deciding they'd rather ram a square peg into a round hole than surgically alter several other people to have square holes instead of round holes.

ETA: And Cleric holy symbols denote cosmic alignment, not political affiliation. You can just have Good and Evil clerics on Team Not-America for different purposes. And that's assuming you're even right about having to brandish the Divine Focus of a spell - the spell component rules appear to imply that you just have to have a focus on your person, that isn't made clear in the slightest by the SRD.

Focus (F)
A focus component is a prop of some sort. Unlike a material component, a focus is not consumed when the spell is cast and can be reused. As with material components, the cost for a focus is negligible unless a price is given. Assume that focus components of negligible cost are in your spell component pouch.

Divine Focus (DF)
A divine focus component is an item of spiritual significance. The divine focus for a cleric or a paladin is a holy symbol appropriate to the character’s faith.

Everything about a lot of Cleric spells requiring you to own and carry a holy symbol - not so much as a solitary syllable about Clerics having to brandish a holy symbol unless using Turn or Rebuke Undead. For all those RAW care your holy symbol could be a surgical implant.

Wait, don't you generally need to have the material focus on hand when you cast a spell? I know for sure Clerics have to stand for something to get power and in a potential Cold War game, figuring out that something can get your ass(et) burned. And spiritual significance can be read in a couple of ways.

Anyway, if the players aren't able to learn a new system then the concept needs to be changed. Because the Pseudo-Sigil WMD sounds like Tuesday for a low double digits party and insurmountable for something below that. If there are agents high enough level to make a MAD scenario, then there are agents high enough level to stop it who aren't the PCs.

A gang warfare/mafioso game would keep that uneasy peace feeling, fit the world building Prak wants, and not have to worry about unleashing the Shadow Over The Sun or something.

[Omegonthesane]

I quoted the normal focus rules in the above post - wizards need to have negligible focuses in their spell component pouch, ie to hand, but needing it to hand only means you can't literally make it be a surgical implant - you could still wear a crucifix necklace under your shirt and hope no one strip searches you at the People Against Wearing Symbols Of Instruments Of Torturous Execution Convention.

Seconded that having the bad stuff that happens when you escalate be external attention rather than the natural consequence of your escalation is easier to handle in D&D. Indeed it's what my earlier suggestion of "Tharizdun is watching and will absolutely stick his wang into this plane if enough people die in quick succession so no fireballing babies" amounts to in retrospect.

[tussock]

If you want old cold war, it was two trade blocks, the western world, and the eastern world.

Both sides said any nukes used on their protectorate would end the world. Could've built one cobolt bomb each and saved a lot of money, but whatever. Note: Polymorph Any Object, by the rules, you can just end all life on the planet.

Anyway, both protectorates would launch "it's not us!" wars by proxy on the other's protected lands. Limited wars, but sometimes pretty fucking grim and tending to genocidal on the locals. Proxy wars become your PCs, they send monsters into Gorfondel forest, you send in PCs to clear them out, because D&D. You also raid the Arbrak caves for secrets about their WMD capacity, and they send monsters to chase you out.

But the thing is, their gear, their items, their magic, their classes, none of it works with your stuff, because the world is two trade blocks, and none of their stuff works with any of your stuff, or visa versa. CCCP didn't just use different calibre bullets in their different guns, the planes they flew used completely different control systems and different fuel, the only things worked the same were things that could not work differently, they even had vastly different strategies if the war kicked off (note, NATO would've lost, hard).

--

I think for D&D, I'd have one side with Clerics and Bards, and the other with Wizards and Druids. Split all the classes between 'em, and the monsters, secret agents are Clerics who dress in leather and pray for Druid spells and just have a trained bear they keep charmed. That's your "everything over there is different" duelling trade blocks. Plus, there's like 40 classes in 3e, so half is fine.

[Thaluikhain]

Well, I was already planning on welding together elements of Eberron and Planescape. Eberron for the magical industry, and one of the super powers is planned to be a sort of "Sigil on the prime material." I even planned on including, well, a figure named The Lady of Pain, but less as this nebulous figure that exists to enforce the setting, and more as a Stalin-esque Lich queen, who earned the title due to disappearing inconvenient people.

Er...why use an existing, recognisable name, but attach it too something completely different? Unless you are playing V:TM, I guess, where it's a requirement.

[hyzmarca]

The Lady of Pain is analogous to Law Enforcement agencies forcing crime syndicates to keep their mob wars on the down low. Which isn't like super powers in a cold war at all.

Yeah "externally enforced keeping it under the line" is rather different from the cold war's "self enforced keeping it under the line" in a lot of tonal ways. There's not really the same elements of temptation involved, that maybe if you do it just right you'll manage to go over the line and not get caught.

But it's certainly a lot easier to GM.

I was thinking less Lady of Pain and more the Superpowers signed a binding Blood Curse when they split the world between then at magic Not!Yalta. But yeah, there are tonal differences. Fewer games of chicken to played in the belief that the other guy will swerve first.

[Prak]

Well, I was already planning on welding together elements of Eberron and Planescape. Eberron for the magical industry, and one of the super powers is planned to be a sort of "Sigil on the prime material." I even planned on including, well, a figure named The Lady of Pain, but less as this nebulous figure that exists to enforce the setting, and more as a Stalin-esque Lich queen, who earned the title due to disappearing inconvenient people.

Er...why use an existing, recognisable name, but attach it too something completely different? Unless you are playing V:TM, I guess, where it's a requirement.

Because I genuinely like the name and image of the Lady of Pain, and none of my players will give a shit.

[Dogbert]

If your table is hell-bent on hitting nails with the butt of a screwdriver, I can only recommend you using Complete Control since you'll need to give all classes "spy stuff" for your game to have any semblance of functionality.

[Username17]

If your table is hell-bent on hitting nails with the butt of a screwdriver, I can only recommend you using Complete Control since you'll need to give all classes "spy stuff" for your game to have any semblance of functionality.

Prak's first two examples of classes he thought were appropriate to a game about sneaking around and uncovering webs of intrigue were Bard, a class whose every class feature revolves around shouting, and Cleric, a class who is required by law to prominently display their allegiance every time they use any of their class features. We're way past hitting nails with screwdrivers and well into Flintstones cars.

-Username17

[kzt]

Prak's first two examples of classes he thought were appropriate to a game about sneaking around and uncovering webs of intrigue were Bard, a class whose every class feature revolves around shouting, and Cleric, a class who is required by law to prominently display their allegiance every time they use any of their class features. We're way past hitting nails with screwdrivers and well into Flintstones cars.

-Username17

So you don't think Brave Sir Robin and his minstrels are appropriate example of PCs in a game of sneaking and subtlety?

[Pariah Dog]

Prak's first two examples of classes he thought were appropriate to a game about sneaking around and uncovering webs of intrigue were Bard, a class whose every class feature revolves around shouting, and Cleric, a class who is required by law to prominently display their allegiance every time they use any of their class features. We're way past hitting nails with screwdrivers and well into Flintstones cars.

-Username17

So you don't think Brave Sir Robin and his minstrels are appropriate example of PCs in a game of sneaking and subtlety?

This comes to mind

[Omegonthesane]

If your table is hell-bent on hitting nails with the butt of a screwdriver, I can only recommend you using Complete Control since you'll need to give all classes "spy stuff" for your game to have any semblance of functionality.

Prak's first two examples of classes he thought were appropriate to a game about sneaking around and uncovering webs of intrigue were Bard, a class whose every class feature revolves around shouting

Because the pitch was definitely Thief II and not "spies who might need to manipulate people instead of sneaking past them" right?

and Cleric, a class who is required by law to prominently display their allegiance every time they use any of their class features.

I quoted the focus and divine focus rules and found no such requirement that one is generally required to prominently display a focus while using it. And, even if what you were referring to - the need to prominently display a divine focus - was an actual thing, that would mean clerics had to prominently display their religion every time they cast, not their political affiliation.

Or do you imagine literally no one in the Russian Orthodox Church used the symbol of the cross during the Soviet years?

[Prak]

If your table is hell-bent on hitting nails with the butt of a screwdriver, I can only recommend you using Complete Control since you'll need to give all classes "spy stuff" for your game to have any semblance of functionality.

Prak's first two examples of classes he thought were appropriate to a game about sneaking around and uncovering webs of intrigue were Bard, a class whose every class feature revolves around shouting

Because the pitch was definitely Thief II and not "spies who might need to manipulate people instead of sneaking past them" right?

and Cleric, a class who is required by law to prominently display their allegiance every time they use any of their class features.

I quoted the focus and divine focus rules and found no such requirement that one is generally required to prominently display a focus while using it. And, even if what you were referring to - the need to prominently display a divine focus - was an actual thing, that would mean clerics had to prominently display their religion every time they cast, not their political affiliation.

Or do you imagine literally no one in the Russian Orthodox Church used the symbol of the cross during the Soviet years?

Frank is hellbent on his personal view of what a thing should be and will not give an inch to anything else, regardless of reasoning or logic, just like how he decreed that monster hunters in contemporary works don't walk around with sacks full of different tools, despite me pulling counter examples from every major contemporary monster hunter work.

Just ignore anything he says in this thread, like I've decided to do.

ETA- also, even with Clerics having to prominantly display their holy symbol to use their magic, in my setting, that just means that the people from one super power look disdainfully upon cleric pcs. Or, the areligious super power has this whole thing about secular use of holy symbols as fashion, so it's no big deal, or the gods in the setting have covert symbols that are innocuous looking things. Like "hey, that person has solid black, shiny buttons! I mean... there's some chance they're a cleric of Shar, but... we're not gonna gulag everyone with shiny black buttons on their coat."

[Mask_De_H]

If we're talking about people with black shiny buttons being able to call down the wrath of gods, raise the dead, desecrate the land, or really do anything a Cleric of 5th level or higher can do, then you're goddamned right those people are getting sent to the gulag for the good of the state.

You're looking at a world that hides apocalyptic secrets and also a world where people can cast Charm Person, Alter Self, Speak With Dead/Animate Dead, Detect Thoughts, Suggestion, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance and a bunch of other spells I'm probably forgetting that would ramp up Cold War paranoia to Paranoia levels. The balance of power that is hard to mobilize, in the hands of a very few, and legitimately MAD is not a thing in D&D land. Every caster above a certain level is a near infinitely moblie weapon of mass subversion, if not outright destruction.

Frank is being intractable because you have not thought through how to make a spy game work with the materials given. The Bard is problematic not just because anything other than Oratory performance in a spy game is a bad joke, but because their whole thing relies on either music or mindfucking. You either create more trap options on a trap class or have to really work through why musicians aren't killed on sight because any one of them can be mind rapists. The Cleric is not (just) problematic due to divine focus semantics, but because you're now juggling gods, states and man granting magic powers. If Clerics can get power because of belief in the state and potentially have access to resurrection magic, why wouldn't they attack the heathens? A good apocalypse would prove the righteousness of their cause, and in death they may become petitioners of their god.

Like you want three chords and the truth of our Cold War, but right now you're at two chords and a vague idea. And like I said before, a mafioso game would get the level of intrigue and skullduggery in a dirty city you want, with a self-enforcing reason to keep the peace but also fuck up the other guy.