[UA] Help! Dumb PC investigated for kidnapping (Bi3P)

[Christopher]

Well, I have little interest in seeing the character jailed for kidnapping a
girl who was dead when he first saw her. 

But, annoyed? No, amused and amazed, perhaps, but not annoyed. Everything
was going fine (relatively) until that last moment with the cell phone
number. They had decided that there was nothing more to learn. (Sounds like
they were trying to figure out where Bill learned to skinwork.) 

Anyway, as long as the players wise up, they should get out of it, possibly
with a fine for obstructing justice. Then we'll move on to other things.

Thanks,
Christopher Smith Adair

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Prodromou [mailto:merovingianheir at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 9:23 PM
To: x-opher at bigfoot.com; The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [UA] Help! Dumb PC investigated for kidnapping (Bi3P)

So, I think the question here is, what do you WANT to
have happen?  There's plenty of different ways the
police and FBI could react, and you can pull other
plot elements into the story to direct it that way. 
You're controlling the story.

It sounds like, right now, the PCs are desperately
trying to figure out more about this Bill Toge guy,
make sure everything's okay, and follow any leads they
can get.  It sounds like they're having fun with this,
but doing some wacky stuff that could be alerting the
police.  It also sounds like their relentless and kind
of incomprehensible pursuit is starting to annoy you
and make you unsure of what to do next.

Here's a few things that come to mind:

1.  "The Police" isn't a single amorphous entity which
stores information efficiently for later retrieval. 
They could just completely fail to connect and follow
through on this.

2.  Furthermore, the police only have so much manpower
and time.  If Delilah's mother is calling about her
daughter, they might decide she's a crackpot, and not
bother to investigate.

3.  I find that a useful device with the police is to
create a particular officer who's investigating it. 
Give the investigator a personality and remember that
this is just a job for her, and she probably has a
dozen other cases she's working on right now as well. 
Or him.

4.  In this case, you've got a lot of opportunities
for plot devices if you want to get the players out of
it.  The realities collapsing back down could result
in a cleanup of evidence.  The Sheriff de Germaine
could sweep in and make everything better but tell the
players they really caused enough problems.  The
situation is weird enough that it might merit Sleeper
notice and cover up - and explain patiently (or
not-so-patiently) to the players what they did wrong.

5.  If all else fails, arrest the character.  He can
then post bail, get a court date six months in the
future, and you can run the rest of the game with that
over his head.  As long as the game you're planning
doesn't include travel, the character can continue to
be a PC, and will now have a really good incentive to
act more carefully.  

I had the last thing happen to my "street vigilante
House of Renunciation agent trying to redeem the world
one criminal at a time" character in an awesome UA
game recently, after I'd done something impulsive and
stupid (I tried to taser and drag off a criminal while
police were already on the scene.)  Getting arrested
worked out great.  I was still in play for the rest of
the game, getting pressure from the DA to turn in my
friends, and desperately trying to find some kind of
mojo that would get the cops off my back.

Being watched constantly by the police can be a real
downer for a game.  I've had a game turn into a
fugitive game, and, unfortunately, the plot gets kind
of tired quickly - at least, this game did.  My advice
would be to avoid that, unless that's the kind of game
you want to run.  Bring the conflict to a head so it
can be resolved, rather than dragging it out and
letting it escalate until it takes over the game.

One last possibility: Give the PCs something else to
do rather than just leaving them to dig their own
grave deeper and deeper.