Victim runs?

[jkwleisemann]

I'm wondering how many people do this particular variant on the old-fashioned "patrolling the city."

 

The details: A "victim run" involves making yourself an obvious target, and heading out into the bad part of town. It's kinda like the superhero version of being a cop in a sting operation.

 

The character of mine who first truly mastered it: Bombshell. A teenaged cheerleader, blonde, attractive, a little ditzy, wandering through the wrong part of town at the wrong time of day.... Who could effectively turn herself into a low-yield grenade (No Range, Explosion EB, Personal Immunity).

 

I'm wondering if anybody else has their characters do this, or if they stick to regular patrols? Also, if you do, do your characters 'favor' a particular type of criminal to play towards?

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Most of my characters don't pass for human in a dark room, making this operation prone to failure.

[David Blue]

Re: Victim runs?

 

I'm wondering how many people do this particular variant on the old-fashioned "patrolling the city."

 

The details: A "victim run" involves making yourself an obvious target, and heading out into the bad part of town. It's kinda like the superhero version of being a cop in a sting operation.

 

The character of mine who first truly mastered it: Bombshell. A teenaged cheerleader, blonde, attractive, a little ditzy, wandering through the wrong part of town at the wrong time of day.... Who could effectively turn herself into a low-yield grenade (No Range, Explosion EB, Personal Immunity).

 

I'm wondering if anybody else has their characters do this, or if they stick to regular patrols? Also, if you do, do your characters 'favor' a particular type of criminal to play towards?

In general, I'm not interested in criminals, or in busting criminals, and neither are my characters. So: no crime patrols, and I'm not playing to any type of criminals.

 

But, my characters often are playing to particular types of people who need help.

 

Gladiatrix patrolled the city gay district often, because she had a lot of fans there, who were dissatisfied with the protection they were getting from the police from gay-bashers and other menaces.

 

Given that she had complete support from the community, which rightly looked to her as a protector, she had complete information on where trouble had occurred and where it was expected. She didn't bother trying to play the victim, as (a) she didn't look like a gay guy, ad ( she didn't have a "victim" look in her repertoire. Rather, local fans wisely trusted their star enough to play bait.

 

Given the exhibition she made of people who hassled her fans, the problem soon ended. (The only problem was from motorcycle gang that she took down as fast as she could get to them, but which spread out and did a lot of damage.)

 

When there was no further problem, she "patrolled" anyway, because people wanted her to come around and she liked to be around people who wanted her around. Imagine if Freddie Mercury in his prime had had superpowers and been eager to be the costumed champion of gays (or anyone else who liked him). People would ask him to come around regularly just so they could see Freddy Mercury. It was like that.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Justicar, my DC character, is a 6' 2" tall former Marine, with shoulders to match. Even though he's now a Roman Catholic priest, I don't think many thugs would make the mistake of hassling him even in his Secret ID.

 

Zl'f would actually be ideal for this kind of operation. Only 4' 9¾" tall, blonde, and looking like a pretty 14-year-old girl, she's got "Victimize me!" written all over her. She doesn't do patrols, but I think it's pretty likely that she's been accosted while out after hours in Oslo (Since she only needs 2 hours sleep per day, she often does errands in the middle of the night) and left bleeding bad guys in her wake. She may have CvK, but that won't prevent her from breaking the bad guys' bones. Against normal thugs she probably wouldn't even bother to activate her powers unless they pull guns (highly unlikely in Norway); she's pretty dangerous even without them (Think "really short Navy SEAL" dangerous). SPD 4, DEX 23, 2 levels of Combat Luck, and almost 60 points in martial arts will do that.

[Psylint]

Re: Victim runs?

 

One of my characters, Revenant did. But his deal was busting dirty cops, so maybe it's not exactly equivalent.

[Stormraven]

Re: Victim runs?

 

More than a few of my characters do that... The ones who can get away with it, anyway... The 6'1" Guardian doesn't look much like a victim, no matter what she does, so she's not very successful with that...

 

Others will tend to run the jogging trails, almost begging for someone to try to victimise them...

[Haerandir]

Re: Victim runs?

 

I've never specifically done a victim run, but I've had several characters who went undercover to investigate specific crimes. If, say, Renaissance Man or Wind Dragon were in a city where there was some sort of paranormal serial killer rampage going on, they'd almost certainly disguise themselves and go looking for him. But as a general tactic? No. Usually my characters use the "monitor police bands" and "run to where the smoke is" tactics for finding trouble. Generally, they have plenty of stuff to fill their time with instead of going out patrolling.

[Zed-F]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Soulbarb: Would never do such a thing on a regular basis. She might use her secret ID to lure a particular perp she had reason to go after, if she thought that particular perp were vulnerable to such a ploy. But it's not part of her standard repertoire. In fact, 'patrolling' at all is not part of her standard repertoire; she's more into targeted investigations, and acquires her information about what's going on that merits investigation through her many contacts.

 

Sylph might do a victim run, but not deliberately. More likely she'd wind up going into the wrong part of town out of (a) ignorance of the lay of the land or ( an honest desire to believe the best of others, thereby blinding herself to the potential dangers.

[Hermit]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Many of my characters would be reluctant to risk their secret ID with such a ploy if another option was availible.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Special Agent Trent wouldn't do this, as that's something that should be left to LOCAL law enforcement.

 

However, he wouldn't be entirely opposed to laying some psychokinetic smackdown on any mugger unlucky enough to target him.

[wylodmayer]

Re: Victim runs?

 

The details: A "victim run" involves making yourself an obvious target, and heading out into the bad part of town. It's kinda like the superhero version of being a cop in a sting operation.

 

None of my characters have ever done this for various reasons, but one of them definitely had the most interesting reason not to -

 

Cat was a teenage girl with exceptional athletic abilities and intelligence (her father had been one of those upper end humans who had gotten her mom pregnant during a post-rescue one night stand). Thing is, she had a rough, rough childhood growing up in one of the poorest areas of the city. Although she didn't have a full on split personality, she created the persona of the Cat largely to rescue herself. She knew who her father was (he had died anyway), and she always resented the fact that he and heroes like him never showed up to whisk her away to a better life. So her heroic identity was the superhero she never had around. She wouldn't have cottoned to the idea of playing victim to lure out bad guys, because in her Secret ID she so often had been the victim, and she had trouble processing that she even could fight for herself when not wearing her costume.

 

Now, later, a serious trauma in game did send her spiralling toward a more splintered personality. The other characters noticed she was acting weird, but she kept putting them off by telling them she was working a particularly disturbing "missing kid" case. They only figured out that she had lost her marbles when they checked her notes and realized that the kid she was looking for was her. They got her some help after that.

[MechaGM]

Re: Victim runs?

 

Hmm...

 

Gabriel, being a fellow with large feathery wings (and with a public ID and rep as one of the old-school heroes who's recently come out of retirement) really can't pull off looking like a victim. He did the patroling thing pretty regularly when there wasn't anything more pressing up.

 

Zauberer probably *could* pull off a victim ploy... being a scholarly (and obviously well off) sort in the "wrong part of town" could provoke some dangerous reactions... though he was the hero of mine who came up with the "bright" idea of using his images spell to create a giant glowing sign in the air pointing out exactly where he was to lure a psychopathic, axe-wielding, flying madman (who was obsessed with killing Zauberer) to come out of hiding and try to kill him. It worked too... almost got Zauberer killed. See, we were set up to handle that particular hunter... I forgot about Zauberer's *other* hunteds...

 

Omicron also really couldn't pull off looking the victim... given his obvious glowing eyes and reputation as one of the more powerful telekineticists in the country.

[Narratio]

Re: Victim runs?

 

I had a player who liked to do this, so once a month I'd run a spot as a sub story. He was a 'Shazam' type. A weak, weedy, geek nerd becomes a 6'2" Flying Brick upon rubbing his pinky ring. I only allowed it to happen 3 times then the thugs got wise and avoided him. He went back to patrolling.