Tarynt Essrog
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Posts: 29
Joined: Sat 29 Dec 2018, 06:57

Investigator House Rule #1: Shadowing

Sat 28 Jan 2023, 19:13

The GROUP STEALTH rule states that when multiple characters are sneaking together, you roll the stealth skill of the character with the lowest stealth rating once for the entire group.

This rule makes sense for cases where a party is sneaking through the kipple waste or down the hallway of an abandoned building; but it doesn't take into account the advantages of having extra manpower in a crowded environment when conducting surveillance; especially when a subject starts to move.

When following a subject, one investigator will keep eyes on the subject and the other investigators will try to stay out of line of sight of the subject while following the first investigator. When the subject makes a turn, the first investigator can signal to one of the back-ups to catch up and take over the lead so he can keep going straight in case the subject has noticed them and is watching to see if they make the same turn. There is a lot more nuance to the split second decisions being made while shadowing, but I don't think diving deeper into it than that is going to provide context that will translate into useful gameplay advice. (The French Connection has a scene that illustrates the techniques in action, but unfortunately I couldn't find any online clips of that specific scene).

A similar principle applies to tailing someone by car, especially on the highway. (It's harder to catch up to take over the lead with a car in a dense urban environment, because you can't push past traffic the way you can push past pedestrians on foot).

The most basic version of a house rule for SHADOWING in the city that I would put forward would be use the rating of the character with the lowest stealth as written for GROUP STEALTH, but allow each additional character on the tail to assist, contributing their skill die, up three additional STEALTH dice.

If I wanted to make it a little harder, I'd make the shadowing character with the lowest OBSERVATION rating make a roll and say the number of successes was the maximum number of assists, and if there were no successes that the tail was lost without the subject necessarily even noticing that they were being followed. This is because when you are prioritizing not getting burned as much as not losing the subject, you are always riding the razor's edge between staying far enough away that you don't get seen and so far away that you lose sight of the target. No assist on said OBSERVATION roll, because the subject will probably be lost when the character with weak OBSERVATION is in the lead trying to keep eyes on the subject by themselves.

To add to that, if the subject notices that they are being shadowed with a successful OBSERVATION roll opposed by the assisted STEALTH roll of SHADOWING group, they can attempt to discreetly lose the tail without advertising that they burned their tail by making their own STEALTH roll opposing the OBVSERVATION roll from the previous paragraph. If they can't lose the tail this way, than can try to run, or go to somewhere other than they originally intended to throw the investigators off the trail.
 
Midnightplat
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Joined: Mon 13 Jun 2022, 09:48

Re: Investigator House Rule #1: Shadowing

Sat 28 Jan 2023, 20:34

Cool. What you're talking about is often taught as the "ABC method" to criminal investigators in the English speaking world. This vid/lecture decently reflects materials I've been exposed to:

https://youtu.be/W7BY3v-DXDI

Besides the French Connection, an almost literal textbook performance of the method is found in the film The International, Clive Owen's character even designates himself and his team as "A" "B" "C" before they tail their subject. It's fairly well done and technically accurate, which is ironic because it's the lead up to the Guggenheim shoot out which is spectacularly over the top.

I haven't played with it a lot yet, but I do like how in the core rules the weakest link of the team can blow the surveillance (that's real). At the same time, if you want to play it out where the teams' "ghosts" can help prevent the teams Keystone cop from burning the mission, your houserule seems pretty cool. Bladerunner impresses me in it does feel very criminal investigative procedures informed. i think the group stealth check is a mechanical simplification of the notion that the investigators are very much flowing per detective basic surveillance skills, and just using the weak link theory for the group. But with modern/future comms etc. introducing other team members competency to save the job works too, esepcially if it's one of those situations where the surveillance is vital to showing the team something advancing the case.

Where the stakes are more ambivalent, I could see allowing a failure to eliminate a burned member of the team (though I guess the team would have to perform an observation to determine they've been burned), and proceeding with the reduced capacity for further perhaps more difficult checks.
 
Tarynt Essrog
Topic Author
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat 29 Dec 2018, 06:57

Re: Investigator House Rule #1: Shadowing

Sat 28 Jan 2023, 23:15

Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard it called the ABC method before. If a game runner wanted to capture that level of granularity, I'll bet they could do it with a modified set of chase cards to dramatize every beat.

My own experience with surveillance is that when it mattered things usually got two too chaotic for whoever was in front to stick to such well defined rolls. But my experience is limited to civilian investigations of things like disability and social service fraud, and I rarely had an opportunity to work with more than one partner. It's probably a much tighter operation in some law enforcement units, (but definitely not all).

The thing I wanted to convey in my house rule was that if you have three or four guys to work with, even if you think one of them is a weak link, you are better off including the weak link than leaving them out. Even if the weak link only advanced once to put eyes on the target for 90 seconds, that is 90 seconds that a more experienced surveillance investigator can fall back, put on a different hat, and come back up on the other side of the street. The more likely mistake of the less experience investigator was losing sight of the target when they were up front, hence the OBSERVATION check from the weakest link.

At least that's what I found when a greater priority was put on not getting burned than not loosing sight of the target, which I always have for the kind of work I do. If my players said they were putting a greater priority on not loosing a subject than not getting burned, I'd let them revert back to the GROUP STEALTH rules as written.
 
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Kaybe
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Re: Investigator House Rule #1: Shadowing

Wed 08 Feb 2023, 02:17

Note: what you're describing is not multiple characters stealthing together, but stealthing one at a time, with only one tailing close while the others tail their buddy at a good distance. So only a single person needs to roll Stealth because the 'backups' are too far back to matter for purposes of shadowing.
 
Tarynt Essrog
Topic Author
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat 29 Dec 2018, 06:57

Re: Investigator House Rule #1: Shadowing

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 00:59

No, I am specifically describing multiple characters "stealthing" together. If you just reverse the rules as written and let the character with the highest stealth make the roll because only one character is keeping eyes on the target, that doesn't account for the inherent advantage that two or three extra bodies give to surveillance of a moving target in a crowded environment.

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