[Social Engineering] Find a specific person in a foreign city (Known Individuals)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Lamech

I would use something akin to the MH2 rules for investigation.

Yes, I'm trying to get some use out of those. I'm certainly finding them more inspiring than the vast-but-hard-to-follow advice of Mysteries.

Originally Posted by Lamech

A thing to note:
You need enough info starting out to uniquely identify one person. Not half a dozen. Not zero.

I'm assuming you mean in the end. It's (IMHO) perfectly okay to start chasing half a dozen trails only to exclude all but one by the end of the adventure.

Originally Posted by Lamech

This list:
Will make it all most impossible. You've given them bad info. It points to someone who does not exist. Now there is the magic name thing, but is the guy going to drop all pretense if a group of people start blabbing around town? If the party asks seven people if they are "the real slim shady" will it work when the "real slim shady" is number 8? Assuming the party needs to be sparing with the name, they'll have problems. (If they don't need to be sparring with the name, they can simply post an ad in the local paper asking "will the real slim shady please stand up?".)

Thanks, this is why I'm asking about balancing the trivial against the impossible. The good news is, the party decided to, instead of going to the town where she currently is, to look at the city from which she retreated (thus spending extra time for extra clues). That's a somewhat unexpected turn of events that will allow them to filter out some/all of the false leads, and likely get some more info on the character (e.g., if they're insistent and resourceful, a new composite).

Originally Posted by Lamech

What might happen: So the party makes a list of people with the same hobbies/language/CF as the target. They track down the phone and figure out where it came from. Our target "slim shady". He doesn't match the description. They ask him where he got the phone. He gives them a plausible dead end that goes nowhere. Party continues to search for someone who matches the description. After an exhaustive search they conclude that nobody in the city matches the information given.

I actually have a pre-planned lead for the phone that does give roughly one half of the information required to pinpoint the NPC (but has to be united with another half from another source).