to give you a bit of backstory I'm running a Victorian Era Steampunk Campaign and where my players are a part of a government funded monster hunting organisation, in the next few sessions they are slated to go to a masquerade ball honoring the organisations achievements at Buckingham palace, however the city is under siege by a terrorist group trying to overthrow the British government (they will be making an appearance as a combat encounter as well as the grand reveal of their leader; a masked murderer by the name of Spring Heeled Jack), however this is one of my first major social encounters and I'm unsure about what the goal of this social encounter should be. I would like there to be a lot of plot hints as it is going to be a major gathering of the influential NPCs in the campaign, it's also a chance to create or introduce new npcs and their stories. some of the ideas I've had are the 3 major ringleaders of the terrorist organisation hidden amoung the guests and a clue like situation to figure out who they are, skill challenges for debates to gain clues or plot hints and foreshadowing future events, intrigue, etc. in short I'm looking for advice on running social encounters and how to build drama as brushing shoulders with the elite isn't without risk either, but also just fun mechanics that I can use or side plots to throw in, if anyone has run an encounter like this before I'd love to hear about it as well.
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So the first thing you need to do is narrow the focus. Like any real social event, the number of people present is overwhelming. You need something to keep the PC's from all wandering off in different directions, or just getting lost in a sea of NPC's they might not know very well at this point. Given the circumstances you've described, I'd suggest giving the PC's an anonymous tip that there will be an attempt on the life of a prominent NPC at the party. We'll call this the victim NPC; the victim is now the center of your scene and everything revolves around him or her. This also means the PC's will always return their focus to this NPC whenever they hit a dead end, keeping the scene moving. Because the PC's don't know anything about the plot, everyone is a potential suspect and this means you can introduce any NPC's you like just by having them hobnob around the victim. No special mechanics necessary, just add roleplaying.
Now we need to work out the actual plot on the victim's life. We want Spring Heeled Jack to show up later, so he himself shouldn't be directly involved. We need some sort of subordinate who is going to do the deed. The plot needs the right balance of simplicity and complexity; you can't have the assassin just walk up and stab the victim since that wouldn't leave much room for intrigue, but you also don't want too many moving parts since that can leave too many points of failure. I think the best way to do this is to time the victim's death (if the PC's don't stop it) with Spring Heeled Jack's appearance. The plan should be to have the assassin lure the NPC to the location where Jack will make his entrance, and then and only then will the killing take place. I'd suggest having two terrorist operatives; one is the lure attempted to draw the victim to the time and place, and one is the decoy designed to divert attention when it happens. The decoy should notice that the PC's are snooping and attempt to distract them for the lure. You could have other nameless mooks acting as supporters (it could be as simple as a foot that sticks out to "accidentally" trip someone who is snooping in the wrong place) but don't put too much into them; they're not the focus here.
So how exactly will you lure the NPC away? You could go with the classic "attractive member of the opposite sex" but that might be a bit cliche and much too obvious (I'd be inclined to have the victim be a known womanizer and throw in a few red herrings if going down that road). Don't have the lure strike immediately; have them dance with the victim, then maybe "drop" a valuable trinket. The decoy should then pick it up and hand it to the victim when the time is right, with the obvious intent that the victim will go running off to return it (preferably timed with a nice distraction). Another possibility is to have the lure running messages for the victim throughout the night as a low-level staffer, and have the victim's frustration slowly build as his messages are misunderstood (due to deliberate tampering by the messenger). Eventually have him storm off to deliver his message in person, using the decoy to cover for this event. I'm sure you could come up with a few others that follow this schema, but the general idea should be a lure to draw the victim away, and a decoy to distract at the moment it happens.
With the basic outline of the plot worked out, now we need clues. After all, our goal isn't to create a perfect foolproof scheme, but rather to have the PC's uncover a scheme that had just enough flaws for them to catch on. For each of the decoy and lure you should include a minimum of three suspicious things they do that draw attention to themselves. For instance, the decoy could repeatedly have a short discussion with a shady masked character throughout the night that the PC's can spot, or after it becomes obvious that the PC's are sleuthing the decoy could attempt to distract them with a red herring (which makes him look suspicious when it turns out to be nothing). The lure should be taking actions that are inherently suspicious, so there shouldn't need to be too much there.
Finally, we need a failsafe. It's entirely possible the PC's could go barking up the wrong tree; it happens, you need to be prepared for it. Or worse, the decoy could be too effective and successfully distract the PC's from the lure. Tunnel vision is a thing. For the decoy there's an easy failsafe; if the PC's notice that the victim is missing they should have a short window to confront the decoy, and if pressed he will point them towards where the murder is about to occur and tell them they're too late (seeking to make his escape while the PC's are distracted; you now have a dramatic rescue scene). Alternately the PC's might get entirely lost, in which case you should have a gigantic red flag you could hand the PC's on a silver platter (for instance someone noting that the decoy reassigned guard positions). Only give them to this if failure is imminent and you need to drive things forward very quickly.
With the scheme done, now we need to flesh out the rest of the party. We need other NPC's who will talk with the victim and the PC's, and we need unrelated occurrences and events throughout the night. Write up more events than you think you'll need; every time the PC's pull a blank and ask if anything is happening, reach into your grab bag of events. Some of these events should be related to the lure or decoy (your clues!), while others shouldn't.
Above all else, don't sweat it. Any time you're doing something new you will screw up the delivery. The key thing is to have fun, learn from the experience, and try to pay attention to areas where you can improve next time. Oh, and one last thing: be really careful with red herrings. They can be necessary at times if you need to teach your players not to jump to conclusions, or if the actual plot would be too obvious without them, but they're inherently dead ends for the plot and can negatively affect the flow of the game. If you do use them, try to structure them so the PC's get a legitimate clue by following up on them, or have the PC's stumble over a legitimate clue in the course of following up on the red herring. Always try to be keeping the plot moving forward.
Well, that ended up as a monumental wall of text :-P
Release the pugwampi!
Well, that ended up as a monumental wall of text :-P
Wow! Well done!
Well, that ended up as a monumental wall of text :-P
indeed haha, the victim of choice I would say would have to be the commander of the monster hunting organisation a lvl 20 cavalier or Queen Victoria herself. only problem is one is very difficult to kill and the queen is not very mobile due to having fallen down a set of stairs, there is 3 other lvl 20's who are ringleaders of the monster hunting organisation a divination wizard, a sniper slayer, and a mystic theurge (who is the BEBG but they don't know)
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Release the pugwampi!
I will actually use this, my players will hate me for all eternity but that's fine lol
Multiple 20th level characters? That's a significantly higher power level than I was anticipating.
Actually... if you do want a way to quickly dispose of a 20th level character, surround him with assassins (as in, the prestige class) and a pugwampi. He has to make two saves vs death against each of them. Even if they individually have only a 20% chance for their instant kill, if he has to roll twice against each save then five assassins each delivering their death strike would have a 90% chance to kill. If accuracy is an issue have the assassins use brilliant energy weapons; expensive, but it lets them use their death attack against touch AC, and if we're talking about a campaign featuring multiple 20th level characters then +5 equivalent weapons are appropriate to that power level.
Remember that immunity to the pugwampi's aura can be gained by having any luck bonuses. The cheapest way for a permanent luck bonus is a +1 Amulet of Bullet Protection (which is a luck bonus for some reason). Alternately having an allied NPC cast the prayer spell works. In any case, the assassins should be prepared to ignore the pugwampi's aura themselves.
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Update: well the queen got shot. I put the two ring leaders in disguise amoungst the NPCs one polymorphed to look like a human camera boy, the other as a highstanding member of their order who always wears full armor, giving them a few quirks and dropping a number of stuble tells as well as gaps in knowledge. I placed some side quests like getting a bottle of wine in the kitchen with their favorite npcs that I knew they were likely to want to go speak with where clues could be found, the only clue they found was as one poster suggested have them fetch a part for their resident mechanic who was workng on his latest invention and they overheard whispers in the vent talking about waiting for a cue from "boy-o" and "funny armor guy" while making humorous remarks at their disguises, the pc however missed the opportunity to flush them out of the vent with steam for interrogation and kept the information largly to himself only telling 2 other party members of the plot he overheard. The hint was mostly unacted upon, they first grilled the armored ring leader immediately accusing him of being suspicious. Him being a barbarian with low CHA and knowing nothing about the monster hunting organization or about the person he was disguised as other than that they were supposedly stationed in turkey, simply kept denying the suspicion and avoiding questions while throwing claims of suspicion back at the party much like how an evasive toddler argues and tries to hide things lol, answering any questions about himself with real details of his past (a favorite npc is a friend of the real black knight and could have denied the legitimacy of his past, he even told them to send them his way at the beginning lol) giving both his backstory and avoiding making any untrained bluff checks. Sadly no checks were make to pierce his disguise or read his motives, before another PC moved in and suggested they stop pestering him. The photographer however is someone they know well and worked with for a time, a sadistic and manipulative teifling who despises humans snd high society, he liked to pick on the human in the party calling him "pinky", and sarcastically exclaimed that they were his "favorite" because they came from a rich family. He acted as the party's excruciatingly clingy fan boy with an eerily simular voice and gushed over the party whom are mostly unknown to most common people, revealing that he knew far too many details about them and going as far as to telling the human that he was his "favorite". However one by one the party passed off the annoying fan boy telling him to keep an eye out for anything "suspicious" (I kept pestering them about specifying what was going on in an attempt to make them say outload amongst the crowd there was going to be a terrorist attack, even making the leap in logic myself when they tried to keep him in the dark and running with it as if he had connected the dots, none of them picked up that nobody else but the teifling knew the party was put in charge of fighting the terrorists) until he reached the monk. Our LE monk who is on a zealots quest to end evil without caring about the morality of her methods is the most suspicious but also the most blissfully ignorant as to what constitutes as evil. She immediately immediately told the photographer that the best way to test if someone was suspicious is to punch them and see if they react as someone trying not to raise suspicion would reactly calmly in an attempt to act remain natural. After some prying to get information out of them as to who to punch and more subtle displays of the gaps in the npcs knowledge I made another leap in logic in his favor exclaiming that if you want to hide you should do so where it's least expected and right under the nose where you can observe everything, pointing to the queen as the perfect suspect and asking aloud if he should punch the queen. The monk agreed and suggested aloud for the surrounding nobles to hear that he pretend to take her picture before running up to deliver a sucker punch. The party began making their way toward the throne to check on the queen just in time for them to see the photographer approach with his camera and fire the rifle concealed in the camera at the queen just as he planned. My party has been kicking themselves for hours
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Paragraph breaks, please...
My party has been kicking themselves for hours
Okay, that was hilarious.
Players are prone to strange leaps in logic, but "sucker punching the queen is our best course of action for further investigation" is certainly one I'd never have seen coming! In spite of the failure of the investigation, it sounds like the game session was a success. You kept the narrative moving forward; roadblocks and dead ends are the bane of investigations and it looks like you avoided that.
Paragraph breaks, please...
paragraph breaks are for plebs, gotta build a wall of text trump would be proud of. In all seriousness I typed this on my phone at 2:30am lol so I wasn't that concerned with proper writing