What? No investigators?

[starblaze]

Hello all

I have a problem. I am presently running a WW2 superheroes campaign and I have a group of Heroes who have just had one of their number get captured. Now this normally wouldn't be problem except that none of the heroes have a prediliction to actually investigating everything. The players themselves can do it fine but their character just do not have the skills. I don't want NPC"s doing all the legwork but I cannot see any other way to handle it. Normally they are a sort of superhero commando team but I wanted to do something on the homefront for a change.

 

Any suggestions?

[Hermit]

Here's a thought

 

Originally posted by starblaze

Any suggestions?

 

Have an NPC do the legwork, but insist on having a PC come along for protection. The PC can be used as either muscle, or to save the NPC from developing cement boots

 

In the mean time, the PC will be watching the NPC at work, and will have a perfectly legitimate reason to buy those same skills later on and you won't have to do this again

 

Assuming they want to.

[sbarron]

Have the players play the NPCs that will actually be doing the legwork. It can provide a nice break from the ongoing action and allow the players to explore the setting and time period from a different perspective. In addition, the captured PC gets to participate in the search for his character. That way he doesn't have to sit around waiting to get sprung.

 

Once the investigation is completed, the investigators can call in the commandos and brief them on what they found. Then the players slip back into the commando role and go in and kick some butt to bring their man back alive!

[Jeff]

Chances are these guys weren't born to fly, shoot energy blasts, or confront evil with two-fisted justice either, but when the world needed heroes and they had the power, they answered that call and started doing things they hadn't been prepared by training or experience to do. Here's another frontier for them. It might be difficult, they may bungle it a bit, but they can try the investigation thing too. Part of trying it, of course, might be trying to get more experienced help - "hero" doesn't mean "stupid".

[assault]

Originally posted by sbarron

Have the players play the NPCs that will actually be doing the legwork. It can provide a nice break from the ongoing action and allow the players to explore the setting and time period from a different perspective. In addition, the captured PC gets to participate in the search for his character. That way he doesn't have to sit around waiting to get sprung.

 

This is the correct approach, IMHO. At the very least, the player of the captured character should be given an NPC to play. Someone Sandman/Batman like would do just fine. They simply wouldn't be powerful enough to overshadow the other PCs, being essentially just normals, but would be in their element in this situation.

 

You could even drag the search out for a couple of sessions to give the other PCs a chance to gain some experience points they can spend on the kind of skills they've just realised they don't have and need!

 

As for the captured character, well, if his/her player played the NPC well, I wouldn't be reluctant to pass the experience points onto the PC.

 

As for the impact on your overall campaign: adding an unpowered detective/vigilante character is unlikely to make much difference.

 

So there, that's what I would do.

 

Alan

[Hugh Neilson]

I'll weigh in on the "play the NPC's" side as well. This is also a good way of simulating those "Two Teams Get Togather" scenarios when tyey break into sub-teams. Let the guys on the other mission run the allies on this one.

[Blue]

I feel for ya. As is typical with superheroic charactes, everybody wants superpowers and nobody wants to buy skills unless they are there just for "color".

 

I had to compromise when I realized no one had bought up their skills very much and give an 8- roll on virtually every skill that I thought was reasonable. Since I often have 5-8 players, that gives a decent chance of SOMEONE finding the right clue, making the right deduction, or hacking into the system. I also have a few "informational" NPCs. They aren't team members but their serve to every once in a while bump into the heroes with a clue that the NPC doesn't realize is a clue but the heroes do.

 

But then most of my games have degenerated into slugfests anyway. With the exception of two players, most of my players aren't trying to investigate anything. It's a shame too. I've left plenty of leads around that they make no attempt to follow up on.

[Hugh Neilson]

Originally posted by Blue

I had to compromise when I realized no one had bought up their skills very much and give an 8- roll on virtually every skill that I thought was reasonable. Since I often have 5-8 players, that gives a decent chance of SOMEONE finding the right clue, making the right deduction, or hacking into the system. I also have a few "informational" NPCs. They aren't team members but their serve to every once in a while bump into the heroes with a clue that the NPC doesn't realize is a clue but the heroes do.

 

But then most of my games have degenerated into slugfests anyway. With the exception of two players, most of my players aren't trying to investigate anything. It's a shame too. I've left plenty of leads around that they make no attempt to follow up on.

 

So the motivation for players to spend points on these skills would be what? You're letting them get the benefits and avoid the point costs.

 

I owuld be tempted to put some investigative leads in a scenario and, if they don't follow up, they miss some crucial opportunity to foil the villain's plans and he gets away with something. Then have a police detective or nosy reporter find the missing clue, and get it published - "Heros Missed the Boat - Film at 11".

 

Better (worse?) introduce a rival team of heroes that includes members with skills and have them foil crimes "our heroes" missed. See how fast some xp gets spent in rectifying this deficiency.

 

You think a head hit is painful, try a solid blow to the ego!

[starblaze]

Well as for the captured character we have kicked the player out of our group so that is not a problem. Not to get off topic but he was just annoying everyone and was probably one of the most stupid players I have ever met. I mean the only reason he was even captured is because he had his defenses completely eliminated and continued to fight.

 

As for getting an NPC to do the legwork, I actually was trying to avoid doing something like that simply because it had been done before. Still, I liked the idea of the players playing the investigators that way they can do some detective work and still play their more combative characters.

 

Thanks for the help.

[assault]

Another point (probably the last from me):

 

DC had a whole lot of Golden Age characters (Marvel had a lot fewer). The result of this was the All-Star Squadron - probably the biggest superteam, and very likely the most powerful, ever. (It had subgroups, though.)

 

This allows you to do something that has been suggested for Galactic Champions settings: allowing players to play multiple characters of varying power levels. That means, in this case, a player could play a high level character like Dr Fate, the Spectre(!!!!) or Superman, a low power character like Dr Mid-Nite or Wildcat, or someone in between, all on different weeks.

 

If you shuffle the power levels around a bit, you can even have someone playing one of the powerful characters in a kind of starring role, while the rest of the team are having to deal with the same problem with their wits and skills. If you are careful, and write your scenarios properly, there is no particular reason why this couldn't work - you just have to ensure that all the characters have a scene in which they can shine. In any case, such starring roles would be rotated, so everyone will eventually have their moment as The Big Guy.

 

If you don't think you can handle that, or if your players don't like it, just run teams of characters of roughly the same power level.

 

For a more traditional approach, have a main set of PCs, who play a normal type of campaign, but have the players generate higher and lower level characters as well. That way, the lower level characters can come in when you need skill based characters, or when you feel like running street level scenarios, providing at least a partial solution to the initial problem that inspired this thread. (But not a complete one - the PCs in question should definitely be encouraged to buy some skills!)

 

The higher level characters are, of course, for when you and your players want to let loose with some serious power. You could try the "guest star" idea occasionally too, but you would have to ensure that everyone has a turn, which would occupy a fair number of sessions, which might be more of a problem than a one off.

 

Anyway, I hope someone is inspired/entertained. It might be a partial solution to some of my own vacilations, anyway.

 

Alan

[Blue]

Originally posted by Hugh Neilson

So the motivation for players to spend points on these skills would be what? You're letting them get the benefits and avoid the point costs.

 

Yup. Pretty much. I expect my campaign has a shelf-life of another couple months with everybody off getting married, having kids, going to school, moving away, changing jobs, etc. So I figure I'm not going to quibble about skills right now. Though any GM would have a right to under normal circumstances.

[pinecone]

Sure use a NPC...just make it a DNPC...DNPC's are always doing dumb stuff like trying to take down 5tyh collum rings by themselves,let the heros secretly tail the DNPC squad and clean up after them...you know ,intercept the hit team,stuff like that.....then let the DNPC rub the hero's lake of skill in their faces so they get P.O>ed and buy some blinkin skills!