View Single Post
Old 10-16-2017, 12:58 PM   #7
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Psychological Profiling

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti View Post
Want a quick sketch of rules for this?

[Realistic psychological profiling:

The profiler rolls Fortune-Telling to produce a reading, and either Fast-Talk or Writing to sell it to the lead investigator. There are no other effects.

A more scrupulous profiler Mathematics (Statistics) and either Psychology-2 or Sociology-2. If all rolls succeed, the profile provides one clue, or +1 to the lead investigator's Criminology or Intelligence Analysis roll.


(I'm not a psychological profiler, but I am a psychologist, and I've read a little bit of the literature on profiling. If anyone here knows more about realistic psychological profiling and wants to contradict my interpretation, I'm fully willing to concede their point.)
I might add a little caveat about _who_ is being profiled.

Some of what are loosely and luridly described as "serial killers" would be more accurately described as something like "compulsive pattern killers" in a tighter technical nomenclature. They really do have patterns that can be discerned.

Sometimes though what you're looking for is a "spree killer". An honest analysis of one of those would go something like "Well he was sort of wandering around at random and then he got drunk and started shooting people. My recommendation is that you stake out every honky-tonk in Texas. Or possibly Oklahoma.".

You can't find patterns that aren't there.
__________________
Fred Brackin
Fred Brackin is offline   Reply With Quote