RPGaDay: Lever

Lever?  Really?

Sighs.

Consults dictionary.

"Something you use, often unfairly, to try to persuade someone to do what you want."

One of the many fun things about urban fantasy is the fae, who have all kinds of unfair methods of persuasion.  One of them is their ability to make binding deals, often involving giving a gift which comes with some serious strings attached.  Genre savvy players don't make these easy to set up.  One plot we ran at a LARP involved fae, and it never really took off due to the players' immense reluctance to even talk to the fae, let alone make any kind of deal.

I managed it once though.

In my Dresden Files game I had the players encounter a group of svartalfar.  The PC party were all supernatural, including a changeling, so the svartalfar knew they were likely to be somewhat genre savvy regarding the fae.  Getting the PCs to do what they wanted was going to be a challenge.

It began with a gift.  Something very desirable to the PC it was offered to, and accompanied by an assurance that it was a gift, offered freely and without obligation.  The fae in this setting can't lie, only twist the truth, and this gift really was a gift.

The motivation, of course, was to get the PCs to think positively of the svartalfar and to create a sense of obligation, in much the same way as the free pens given away by companies selling over-50s life insurance.

The gift was followed by a request.  This time it was a deal, but one laid out clearly.  It described exactly what they wanted from the PCs (find the cause of a series of deaths) and what they would do in return (forge one weapon for the PCs, to be selected from a choice of three available options).

This was an entirely honest deal, and the svartalfar's primary motivation was to find out what killed some of their team.  No tricks, no deception.  But again, it served to influence the PC's attitude towards the svartalfar.  They are fae, they make binding deals like any other similarly powerful fae, but they've played fair with the PCs throughout.

So with this positive relationship established, the svartalfar dropped round for a visit...

The players had just had a big fight with a black court vampire, during which they'd learned that a) just because said vampire was a puny minion called Brian, didn't mean he wasn't one of the most formidable foes they'd encountered so far and b) that black court vampires can use their voice as a lever to force people into doing what they want.

"Chris, invite me into the house."
Chris opens a window.  "Brian, come in."

The svartalfar looked at the house's completely wrecked frontage with horror and pity.

"Would you like us to fix that up for you?"
"Yes please."

Gotcha.

When the svartalfar called in that favour it was nothing they wouldn't have agreed to do even without supernatural leverage.  But the fact I managed to pull this off on a group of genre savvy players still makes me smile.