itch.io

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.

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 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.

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.