Am I missing the page that describe how investigation actually works in the game? I see in the flow chart : "YOU SEARCH, ASK AROUND, FIND CLUES, AND INVESTIGATE, OR STUMBLE INTO USEFUL INFORMATION OR ANOTHER ENCOUNTER."
But there is no GM Guidance on running this investigation like there is for combat.
You know. Great advice. I think part of me wrote this while assuming that this would be part of the standard storytelling standard that is akin with TTRPG and maybe i didn't think to explain it very well.
I'm thinking of a way to write some addendum pages and include it with this for somebody who might be looking for this experience.
A lot of this assumed it would be done with generating tasks that the DM would give a difficulty rating based on complexity through storytelling,
ex. "Hansen arrived on Spacedock 447-b and started asking around for the whereabouts of Muldoon. Since he's not sure where to start, it would be a tough check, unless Hansen could tell me a reason why he might actually have some clues or leads to change this difficulty to a normal, possibly easy check."
But i can see about clarifying it with further detail. I've been looking at writing additional mechanics, and maybe it wouldn't be bad to further flesh that out.
I'm sorry for the lack of clarity on this in the book. And thanks for the advice and insight. It's appreciated. :)
I appreciate the response! Investigations are some of the toughest things to run smoothly in a TTRPG. Many games either go very simulationist where the DM has to set up many clues (because PCs will miss them) and have an established Revelation List to learn various aspects. Then you need all these plans to allow for what happens when the PCs still miss clues. Or the games go for very abstract ways where PCs may need to fill in a clock or they collect currencies for gathering information allowing you to better improv what is learned based on what the PC does. Brindlewood Bay does a little bit of both and it provides a generic list of clues that could be placed almost anywhere with some creativity.
The good thing about Bounty Hunting is that you don't need to do too much so its easier to give leads to a location no matter where PCs decide to look. Its easy to focus on the chase or sometimes even collecting the bounty is the tough part as complications arise.
I've been thinking about this a lot since your initial comment and am trying to think of a system for it and attaching it to the bundle as extended information.
I don't know if this is a situation that requires some extended skill challenges to do that setup, or something, but you're presenting a lot of interesting information that i'd like to try out and write a proper system for, for anything else to give you a concrete system of doing it.
I picked up the Blade Runner TTRPG, and while i haven't gotten it to the table, i know one of it's negative remarks is that the investigation system isn't as robust or functional as expected. While i can't verify that (yet) i find it interesting that something that seemingly should have been a slam dunk, well, wasn't. And this puts me in an interesting school of thought to explore this and make something.
Will love to make something that i hope will work well with what you want or hope to get from it. :)
That is a shame to see from Free League. I know Vaesen is on my list to help me run better investigations along with Call of Cthulhu and Monster of the Week. And as a sci fi nerd, I want to see Blade Runner too with having some nice brooding PCs. And now you're going to make me want to read what you come up with!
But seriously I love that you replied and look forward to seeing what you make.
I just ran an Avatar Legends adventure "Water & Mist" where the Players have to find someone and they are presented with an 8-segment clock out of character to represent time pressure. If they couldn't come up with ideas, they could always take time (and Fatigue) to investigate and get a lead. But they generally did a good enough job getting information from people and find clues that it wasn't needed. Just a cool idea as a fallback and a way to abstract investigating a large area for clues. And though the players didn't know, if the clock fills, the kidnapped victim gets blown up. As a nice positive game loop, when the clock gains 2 segments, the PCs get another event that they can use for more clues.
But the setup looked complex with a lot of clues, NPCs, Locations and interconnections between them all. I think a lot of Gumshoe games work similarly.
I wrote this as sort of an assembly cut to this idea (before i saw you responded with the Avatar clock, a system that i actually JUST picked up, actually), and wanted to know what you thought of it in concept. I'd like to fine tune it with something you want, and when i get around to doing a 2nd edition, would love to pen you as an inspiration for making this addition happen.
Let me know what you think. Like i said. This was sort of a tangental approach, but i was sort of thinking about, well, the board game Android as a source for it, since i sort of enjoyed it's abstract approach for it, as well as bits of, well, honestly some Shadowrun 3rd. (gulp.)
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Investigation Mechanic: (an idea at this point.)
A series of extended tests simulating active searching to find information about your suspect.
You can do a test of uninterrupted, undistracted activity (handled as three hours of in-game time activity). If something else happens, the test is interrupted, and the players will have to start over, meaning the test is a failure and no leads are generated.
Tests start at a base difficulty of tough (5 or under), and can be improved by DM approved tags to make it an easier roll.
Roll a d20, beat the check, and see the results.
Successful tests earn one lead.
Critical successes earn five leads.
(Adjective) points can be spent on a success to increase the number of leads by +2 per point. If no success is rolled, you can spend one (Adjective) point to get at least one lead, anyway. However, A DM can expend a Fuck You point to negate (Adjective) points spent for this check.
Critical failures will remove all earned leads and the players will have to start over from scratch, with the DM telling some kind of story about this information being a dead end or a red herring or the Lawman needing to get it together because this is going nowhere.
Leads are typically rolled by one player amongst the group to simulate the active group, but if the group insists on pooling it’s resources, consider their shared efforts to generate three leads for a success and ten for a critical success.
Leads are basically defined as digital fingerprints, known hangouts, associates, and information that can generally be pooled by database to assess where this individual is.
The DM (secretly) determines the number of leads that are required to unveil some key point of information relevant to tracking down their suspect. The information can be as direct as their exact whereabouts, or a good idea to their regular hangouts or activities.
Example difficulties based on your scumbag perp:
Idiot Criminal Dum-Dums, (if not out in the open as it is, which means that they’re one lead away from being caught) might be 3 to 7 leads to locate.
Actual Criminal Professionals may require 8-12.
And people that KNOW how not to get caught might be a minimum of ten, with no maximum capacity. It’s the DM’s determination.
Once the information has been gathered, the players may choose as an action to explore their gathered leads, which is the activity of pooling it all together to create an active storytelling path to hunt the criminal down. If they have enough leads to meet or exceed the DM’s target number, they will unlock some crucial and critical piece of information that might lead them towards their target.
If they do choose to explore their leads and they don’t have enough to meet or exceed the DM’s target, storytell a situation here they go out, hit the streets and spaceways, ask around, and come up with nothing. (The DM can also introduce something else story wise to interrupt their search, say, an unforeseen shakedown by allies of the suspect, or some situation that needs to be addressed.) Unless something drastically affecting the storytelling occurs - they don’t lose the leads for trying - They just come up empty for the moment, and more work will need to be done or something will come up to address the shortfall.
Leads generated only apply to the individual they are searching for, and once they encounter them and capture them (or not), they are considered spent. If the suspect gets away, you will have to begin the search again. (at a much higher DM determined difficulty rating.)
Leads for a suspect are for that suspect only and will not carry to hunting down another suspect. Those leads stay with the target.
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Let me know what you think! The numbers might be fudged. I haven't playtested it yet, but it's pretty much just an abstract information commodity versus target system. I'm trying to think of ways to make it a little more spicier.
After reading your reply, I really like the idea of revising this already, with a "leads are cashed in, and it the target number is close but not quite there - there's a complication, that will still lead to them tracking the guy down, but not without a shakedown, an encounter, or something else that gets in the way BEFORE the event factor."
And if they're way off (DM discretion), it just winds up being a dead end.
I guess it's just establishing those acceptable thresholds.
I am more than happy to be an inspiration. I bought Lawmen to steal all your best ideas and see how it runs, but I still haven’t had a chance to run the system yet, so take anything I say with a large grain of salt! I am also really interested as I’ve never gotten to discuss game design like this with anyone before. I have one other friend who is really into design but not talking about it too much - everyone has their own methods.
Shadowrun is a setting I plan to appreciate as far away from its system as possible! But I skimmed over the Android board game (also a big fan of board games) but haven’t seen this one before. Looks on the more abstract side like you are explaining.
Probably the first question is if Crit failures are interesting - they sound like they may slow the story. I’d want to try it in a playtest but I love those Powered by the Apocalypse misses where even as PCs fail, the story moves forward in new and interesting ways (that are awful for the PCs!). Usually there is some kind of escalating punishment where a red herring causes some trouble - entangling a powerful faction, a PC gets captured and others like you were mentioning. I personally love a list as a GM - improv does well with something solid to crystallize around.
I really like getting bonus information on more leads! Maybe even the player gets to ask a question to give them some more agency. Or from a list of questions to make the improv less intense - What defenses they have, what allies do they have, what are some more entrances to their base, who else is hunting them, etc.
I definitely prefer the complication on not enough leads as well. I would hit them with especially hard trouble like they find their target in the worst possible way - they are being ambushed, fall into a trap, the law enforcement is corrupt here and is on their side.
What were you thinking of as far as time pressure goes? You thinking similar with the Clock or something else in mind?
I am going to skim Monster of the Week this week to see how it does investigation. Its more Monster Hunting to discover weaknesses but it seems interesting to more narratively explore investigation instead of simulating searching for clues which lead to other locations.
