Rampoon City's finest.note
The Prince Division is a bi-weekly Actual Play roleplaying series hosted by The Unexpectables' GM MontyGlu and Edward Bosco.The campaign is set in Rampoon City, a Mega City where magic and technology live hand in hand, and the fantasy world has progressed far into the modern day. The story follows Michael Bryant, Khel Zouren, Virro Tannis, and Lauren Gibby as the newest members of the Rampoon City Police Department's understaffed Prince Division. They're tasked with protecting "Princes and Princesses", humans with an unusual amount of magic power that can be exploited by other creatures, or worse.
The campaign streamed on the Unexpectables's Twitch Channel
, and is currently archived on the official Unexpectables Youtube channel. The Prince Division episodes are also available in podcast form on Spotify. In October of 2020, the show took a month-long hiatus to become a Ravenloft campaign run by Bosco. In 2021, the campaign started sharing a timeslot with a separate campaign called Gateway, and moved to a bi-weekly schedule as a result. The final episode of the series aired on April 2, 2022, the same week as the Epilogue episode of The Unexpectables.
The Prince Division cast:
- MontyGlu as GM
- Edward Bosco as Michael Bryant
- Distortion Devil/Connor McKinley as Virro Tannis
- Sarah Anne Williams as Lauren Gibby
- Arcolf as Khel Zouren
The Prince Division contains examples of:
- Action Dad: Tannis is a highly-skilled martial artist, former bodyguard and single dad.
- And I Must Scream: At least some of the Yeth hounds are former people, transformed into mindless servants of powerful fey as punishment for some crime or indiscretion. For instance, the one that was hunting Samuel in the squad's first case was an elf who ran over the child of a Fairy Queen.
- The Artifact: The way dragons are tiered based off their age is this as in this setting, as Dragons advance more due to accumulated power rather than age. This means that a weak dragon over 500 years old would be considered a young dragon while a very powerful dragon that's not even a century old can be considered an adult or even an ancient.
- Celebrity Star: Sarah Anne Williams, who voices Jinx in League of Legends, plays player character Lauren Gibby as the party's sorcerer.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Averted. As early as the second episode, the squad realize they can get a lot done by just calling people instead of going over to talk to them. During their stakeout to catch the Yeth Hound, they hide themselves in three different locations, but are able to keep in touch by texting each other.
- Crapsack World: While the main world outside Rampoon City isn't exactly commented on, it's pretty clear the city is a rough place to live: Each ward in Rampoon is run by a different wildly powerful magical creature, and in some cases multiple. While some wards like the Heavens Ward and parts of the Dragon's Ward are fine, the Fiend Ward is one extended extortion ring for a mob boss, parts of the Dragon's Ward are in eternal gang wars, and the Lich Ward is apparently so bad most mortals don't dare enter. Further, there are plenty of whole races of people that do not get citizenship within the city, and therefor cannot (legally) own property, go to hospitals, or work normal jobs, leading to vast criminal enterprises, and leading to the point that certain races (like Orcs, who only recently received their citizenship) being seen at an advanced age is considered noteworthy.
- Didn't Think This Through: Meta example, despite being a part of an investigative police force only Lauren ended up being proficient in investigation due to it typically being a Dump Stat in most D&D games. The party realized how much of a mistake they made when they had to do the first session without Lauren and constantly rolled mediocre when it came to investigation
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
- In context, the squad's triumph in their first case is this. Yeth hounds aren't super tough in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that four random shmucks hired two days before were able to defeat one is enough of a surprise to bring Captain Roche out of his stupor.
- The squad petrifying the Tower and ending his reign of terror is this played far straighter, especially as the Tower himself brags that he's more akin to a pillar of the fabric of reality instead of a mere creature.
- Dragons Prefer Princesses: In a manner of speaking. Princes and Princesses can be used as a power source to transform a dragon into the equivalent of an ancient form, and some have a "dragon pull" that entices nearby dragons to their location, even if they don't have malicious intentions.
- Enhance Button: Subverted. When the squad gets camera footage of what turns out to be a yeth hound, Michael asks if they can zoom and enhance it. The tech guy just laughs and says he watches too much TV.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Many species aren't considered citizens, Dragons are effectively immune to the law unless another dragon steps in and Princes and Princesses half of the time are treated more like magic batteries than actual people.
- It's also mentioned off-hand that there's a human purist faction, who, amongst other beliefs, hate the idea of Were-creatures corrupting the human form.
- Gentle Giant: Khel is the largest and most physically imposing member of the team. He's also a total sweetheart and is a former ice cream truck driver.
- Guns Are Worthless: Guns are considered largely useless in Rampoon City, at least from the perspective of police use. Only humans and beasts taking the full damage, with all others taking reduced damage, and Goblinoids and Orcs are outright immune to them.
- Enforced by Monty, as she doesn't personally care for guns, and doesn't see the point to them in a world where powerful, explosive magic that can do far more than your average gun can is widespread.
- Subverted in the battle against the Tower, as Tanis uses his firearm to shoot Gibby in the leg twice. As she's bonded to the Tower at the time, any damage done to her is done to him. The feedback not only breaks the Tower's leg, reducing his movement and allowing Michael to stop him from getting to Gibby and Khel, but also aids in the gang's plan of putting Gibby into a false state of death to break said bond between them, allowing the rest of the gang to hurt the Tower in a more meaningful way.
- Hero of Another Story: The Prince Division finds out that the Postal Division is way more hardcore than they are.Sarah: I kind of wish we were in their campaign.
- Hypocrite: Baron Drumarr, orc head of the Fiend District, chastises Tanis for not keeping an eye on his daughter Nephanae after he has his orcs kidnap her in order to get in contact with him. Tanis gleefully turns this back around on him when it turns out that not only has Tanis's daughter escaped, but also his own, Amelia. Drumarr does not appreciate it.
- Interface Spoiler: When looking into the suspects for Taryn's dissaperance most of the suspects had evenly distributed information except for Caustimire who was portrayed with detailed artwork. Needless to say, she ended up being the party's main lead.
- Let's You and Him Fight: When the PCs are supposed to be given their orientation, the officer in charge instead just pits them in a fight against some of his own officers, resulting in a short brawl.
- Like Reality, Unless Noted: The characters are police officers, but in a fictional city within a fantasy world, so the specific rules vary. As such, the players generally presume that the police operate according to their own local rules until Monty specifies otherwise.
- Living MacGuffin: The Princes and Princesses are otherwise ordinary humans who exude magic that unsavory creatures can use to empower themselves; thus, they're at risk for being kidnapped to essentially use as a power source.
- Mage Species: Humans in the Prince Division setting are inherently magical beings, which mechanically allows each human character allowed to know at a single Cantrip, but Princes and Princesses can possibly find more.
- Magitek: The city has a modern lifestyle made possible by advanced magic. Lighting and refrigeration are explicitly stated to work by magical means, and there's mention and use of cars, cell phones, television and computers.
- Phlebotinum Analogy: Lucy explains the nature of Princes and their out-of-control magic by pouring water into a glass until it overflows...then freaking out about the spilled water.
- Urban Fantasy: Prince Division evokes this aesthetic rather than the more traditional high fantasy setting D&D is known for.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The leaders of the city wards at least seem to be this based on examples seen thus far, despite being races that typically cause a lot of trouble in a D&D universe, such as an archfey and an ancient dragon. Acidback, the ancient green dragon, explains why: the city is a collective of different races living next to each other, and can only remain stable if its leadership carefully maintains a peaceful status quo.
- Second Episode Introduction: Lauren Gibby is introduced in the second session due to Sarah not being able to make it to the first session.
