You are not a criminal
Yet.
Power-Over is a curious thing. Many of us feel as though we have it - power over our thoughts, power over our actions, power over our fates, some of us even believe we have power over others - but this is frequently a falsehood. In reality, Power-Over is not a commonly held thing, not nearly as much as we all think. Indeed, the very conception many of us have of 'power-over' is, itself, wrong; more than just experiencing a hidden failure to possess power-over, we don't even truly understand what it is.
No. What most of us really have is power-to, and it is a remarkably different thing. You have the power to get up and go to work. You have the power to go crack open a nice cold bottle of beer. You even have the power to turn away from what you're presently reading entirely, if you so choose - after all, that's a thing you have the power to do, it is within your power-to.
But you probably don't have much power-over.
That is reserved for a different class of person entirely. Someone rather unlike you.
You are a student, at one university or another within the fine, dark, rainy city of London. You've worked very hard to get where you are, and no doubt you're very intelligent and capable. You have a tremendous amount of power-to - the power to become upwardly socially mobile, the power to graduate with honours and move on to lucrative employment if your degree permits it, the power to create for yourself some kind of future in this dangerous and volatile world.
But, like most people, you have almost no power-over at all.
Unfortunately - or, potentially, fortunately - for you, there is someone in your life who has a tremendous amount of power-over.
Power Over You.
God only knows what they'll make you do with it.
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This is an RP about a group of University students from varying walks of life, with various subject specialties, who are forced by circumstance and by person into a loosely knit group of professional thieves, in order to facilitate what might very well be one of the greatest heists ever pulled. The PCs will make up the students who are forced into helping, and the few major NPCs who are doing the forcing - or working for the people who are - will be played exclusively by myself, or possibly a Co-GM figure, if they have the time, skill, and are trustworthy.
The PCs are, as the title suggests, going to have very little power-over in comparison to the people they're trying to steal from, the people they're trying to steal for, and the NPCs who are tagging along for the ride. This is not to say that your characters will have no valuable input affecting the story, nor is it to say that your choices don't matter - on the contrary, your character will very much be held accountable for them, often in ways that are not necessarily avoidable, or good - it is instead the introduce the theme of outside control. The PCs are just students, some of them may not even be above 21 years of age, and certainly none of them will be above 26 - with possible exception for some medical students, or similarly long degree students. As a result, they have no experience of the world they've been thrust into, and they have no real influence within it; there will be times when they are trapped into making choices, without any sort of third option, and there will be times when things simply happen to them, either as a result of previous choices, or just because their adversaries (or employers) have decided to make things happen to them. In that sense, this is going to be very realistic.
There does, however, remain the chance that the PCs will either be able to escape the job entirely, or that they will be able to complete it and be thusly rewarded - and the potential rewards, excluding the glamour of the job itself, are very much worth it.
For anyone who's interested, this is based quite heavily on the interactive film, Late Shift, which has a very similar premise; with the only major difference is that there's only one member of that team of thieves who was coerced, and the others were very much willing and eager to participate, whether they were students (which, judging from their ages, is possible) or career criminals (which is also likely). The RP is likely to have a similar initial premise, but in the spirit of keeping true to the theme of power-over and choices, the latter plot and ultimate endgame are very much up in the air, and dependent on the PCs' actions.
Let me know if you're up for an RP about theft, choices, and power.
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