The Veteran: a Deep Dive on Tracking

 Recently I playtested our new Quick Start rules with one of my home gaming groups--my bi-weekly Friday group, several members of which had never played Night Shift: VSW before. It was a really fun and eye-opening experience. The majority of my running of NSVSW has been with my Sunday group, who (often unknowingly) were playtesting elements of it while I was working out the rules. 

In any case, the advenure ran very well and we had a great time. It did, however, reveal one element of the game that may perhaps not be as clear as it should be in the rules as written. That element is the Veteran's Tracking ability. I am considering on second print re-naming that ability to make its intent clearer, but until I get there, I thought I'd do a deeper dive here regarding what exactly the Veteran's tracking represents. 

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Supernatural Investigators Extraordinaire

Both Veterans and Survivors are built on some level to be outstanding investigators of both mundane and paranormal crimes and events. For the Survivor, this falls under the purview of their Perception class ability, which allows them to locate hidden panels and drawers, spot clues on the ground, and hear noises in the shadows. 

For Veterans, this is all tied up into their Tracking ability. Many people--and rightly so--view "tracking" as simply the ability to follow physical signs when looking for a target. Are there footprints in the dirt outside the window? Did they break a vase while running out of the room and trail bits of ceramic down the hall? Tracking certainly covers that. In truth, however, it covers far, far more. 

Urban Tracking and CSI

Tracking, as the Veteran uses it, encompasses just about every way you can think of to conduct an investigation into a mystery. Veterans are in many ways like Sherlock Holmes...or Batman. They're ace detectives, and Tracking is their ability to case a crime scene, pick up clues, and put the pieces together so they can figure out what's going on, whodunnit, where, and with what. If Col. Mustard did it in the Ballroom with the Lead Pipe, it's the Veteran who wins the board game by putting all the clues together. In short, it's as much a Crime Scene Investigations skill as it is the ability to make leaps of logic.

From finding that lone matchbook in a pile of garbage with the name of Club Khalsa on the cover to calling upon a police contact to run a license plate number caught by a witness to taking fingerprints and looking for powder traces on a gunshot victim's hands, Tracking lets the Veteran find the necessary pieces of the puzzle to put everything together. A Survivor can find the clues with their Perception ability, and an Intelligence check might allow them to connect the pieces. A Veteran, on the other hand, makes a Tracking check and finds the clue, which leads them to the next piece of the puzzle. 

Like all class abilities, naturally, if the Veteran fails their Tracking check, they can still make standard ability checks to follow it up and possibly even get a Rule of 2 shot if that fails. 

What Tracking Is Not

Tracking, while it represents the Veteran's ability to put together disparate pieces of a complex puzzle, should never be a magic bullet to let the heroes wind their way through a scenario with simple die rolls, with the Game Master doling out the answers in detail. A successful tracking roll should allow the investigator to find puzzle pieces and clues, should point them to the next location or clue, and so on. It should always be left to the players to put together what's happening, A Tracking check can help provide hints and inspiration if they're missing something, but it shouldn't substitute for role playing and player ingenuity, nor should any class ability. 

On the other hand, it's likely that unless they are private investigators or police detectives in real life, your players probably aren't ace investigators for real. There's a thin line that GMs have to tread when running a game--making your players think is one thing, but you have to remember that they're not actually real-life Veterans of the Supernatural Wars with uncanny detection skills, superpowers, and vast knowledge of the occult. Class abilities let their characters do things they can't do in real life. 

In the end, don't let them get over-reliant on their class abilities to do everything for them, but as GM, allow them to use those class abilities to represent their character's expertise. Drop hints to lead them to the proper conclusion, but don't just hand it out. It's also okay to send them off on a red herring every so often, just so long as eventually they hit a proper wall with that red herring which puts them back on the proper path. You can use Tracking for your own purposes, to move your story forward, as well as it being an invaluable aid to your players. 

I've also cross-posted this blog over at the Troll Lord Games blog, adjusted to look at the Gumshoe from Amazing Adventures.

Don't forget, the new Night Companion sourcebook for Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars is available now at our website. Grab the book, the sourcebook, and a range of GM and player tools to explore the dark and hidden corners of our world today!