[Basic] Skill of the week: Tracking

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I don't think that's the point of the question. Is urban tracking based exclusively on physical traces like wilderness tracking? Or does it incorporate social traces? If it doesn't incorporate social traces what should you use for that? Rolling individual influence attempts to get 'which way did he go' results from a crowded street seems like a less than happy approach.

I think that Tracking is described as a very non-social skill. It doesn't involve analyzing bird behaviour and change in vocal signals to estimate distance to another human in the wilderness. It shouldn't involve social tracking just because the terrain changes to urban. We already have a canonical skill for asking around to find a specific individual: Current Affairs (People), along with various sphere-of-activity related skills for specific situations.

As for asking big crowds, I'd say this is a situation where one can look at Approachability rules (in fact, IME when asking stuff on the street, approachability matters!). And otherwise one can roll a broad Reaction check encompassing a big crowd, not separate individuals.

[RogerBW]

A couple of times recently I've called for a roll for tracking (I generally run modern-ish and urban-ish settings) and nobody in the party has had it. This presumably means that next time we generate characters everyone in the group will regard it as vital.

I don't think I've ever had occasion to use the detailed modifiers John summarises here.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I think that Tracking is described as a very non-social skill. It doesn't involve analyzing bird behaviour and change in vocal signals to estimate distance to another human in the wilderness. It shouldn't involve social tracking just because the terrain changes to urban. We already have a canonical skill for asking around to find a specific individual: Current Affairs (People), along with various sphere-of-activity related skills for specific situations.

As for asking big crowds, I'd say this is a situation where one can look at Approachability rules (in fact, IME when asking stuff on the street, approachability matters!). And otherwise one can roll a broad Reaction check encompassing a big crowd, not separate individuals.

If somebody suggested to me that they were using Current Affairs (People) to find out what direction some random person went recently, the only way I can imagine that working even a little is if we're in a sufficiently modern world and the target is sufficiently unusual-looking for reports of the movement to show up on social media...

...The penalty for urban tracking is big, but I don't think it's big enough for most of the cases where you want to follow someone in an urban environment by physical evidence.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If somebody suggested to me that they were using Current Affairs (People) to find out what direction some random person went recently, the only way I can imagine that working even a little is if we're in a sufficiently modern world and the target is sufficiently unusual-looking for reports of the movement to show up on social media...

...The penalty for urban tracking is big, but I don't think it's big enough for most of the cases where you want to follow someone in an urban environment by physical evidence.

I was thinking in the context of a 'cold trail', i.e. when it's too late to use the trail-oriented part of Tracking. For something less cold, where passers-by have seen the target and still haven't managed to walk far enough away to be out of the tracker's earshot, I would focus more on things like Approachability, Influence and Reaction Rolls used to Request Information from the passers-by (I think I mentioned that above).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I was thinking in the context of a 'cold trail', i.e. when it's too late to use the trail-oriented part of Tracking.

Is there another part of Tracking?

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

For something less cold, where passers-by have seen the target and still haven't managed to walk far enough away to be out of the tracker's earshot, I would focus more on things like Approachability, Influence and Reaction Rolls used to Request Information from the passers-by (I think I mentioned that above).

You could, perhaps. It's a lot of rolls in a very little time with a lot of repetition, though. The sort of thing I wouldn't be surprised to see bundled into a larger task roll.

...After all, regular Tracking could be decomposed into a lot of perception tasks and some analytical rolls, but it isn't.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If somebody suggested to me that they were using Current Affairs (People) to find out what direction some random person went recently, the only way I can imagine that working even a little is if we're in a sufficiently modern world and the target is sufficiently unusual-looking for reports of the movement to show up on social media...

Or if the target really likes to update their social media... following them on Twitter takes on a whole new meaning.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I was thinking in the context of a 'cold trail', i.e. when it's too late to use the trail-oriented part of Tracking. For something less cold, where passers-by have seen the target and still haven't managed to walk far enough away to be out of the tracker's earshot, I would focus more on things like Approachability, Influence and Reaction Rolls used to Request Information from the passers-by (I think I mentioned that above).

Consider the Father Brown story The Blue Cross - summary at that link, full text linked from there: a detective is able to trace someone across town well after he has passed, by the small clues the track-ee left behind. In GURPS terms, is that Tracking, or social skills?

[Ultraviolet]

Tracking is a skill often taken by players and often used in the games i play.

Best use of it was in the old Cliffhangers campaign (3rd ed, but what the hey). My character was a phenomenal naturalist and tracker, so nobody else bothered with it. And when I was GM'ing there was a lack of this skill.

Once, in India I think, a character with a fairly poor default but good persuasive skills convinced the party he was following some almost invisible tyre tracks from a vehicle. But they had to move at a slow pace or else he'd lose the tracks. He may have spotted a track to begin with but never followed anything. He was just Lazy and quite bruised so he wanted to slack off for a few days to heal up, and just led the party around at random. Eventually the party found their way back to the plot. But the character was assumed to be a good tracker, and kept his bluff going for years.

I the new 4th ed Cliffhanger campaign the same player did somethign similar with his new character. As opposed to the old campaign I *don't* play a tracker, so nobody really has those skills.
Once, in Congo, we weøre tracking a hostile group og mercenaries who had taken locals prisoners. Naturally such a group couldn't move very fast and would be easy to track, we assumed.
This character led us on a chase for over a week without us ever falling into the ambushes the mercenaries were sure to set. But really, he had no idea what he was doint so we were weaving back and forth across the mercenaries' tracks, and moved so slowly due to a Lame character and massive amounts og heavy wilderness gear that the ambushers gave up after a few days and assumed we weren't following.
Again, the character was not called out as incompetent - on the contrary he led us around the ambushes - and still is believed to be out designated tracker.

[simply Nathan]

We had a dwarf who was carnivorous for medical reasons. He decided to dump stat his IQ down to 8, then wanted to be a hunter. He was practically livid at his min-maxing giving him such a hard time of getting a decent Tracking skill due to Tracking being based on Per being based on the IQ he dumped for extra kill-stuff points.

He was the only player with previous GURPS experience.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Is there another part of Tracking?

I do not think there is any indication of Tracking having any significant parts outside following a trail and concealing a trail. "This is the ability to follow a man or an animal by its tracks," after all.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

You could, perhaps. It's a lot of rolls in a very little time with a lot of repetition, though. The sort of thing I wouldn't be surprised to see bundled into a larger task roll.

...After all, regular Tracking could be decomposed into a lot of perception tasks and some analytical rolls, but it isn't.

There's a lot of rolls for Tracking too. Remember that Urban Tracking rolls every minute. During which you're unlikely to cover more than 30-60 yards of distance.

If anything, I think the information gained from passers-by may provide a bigger benefit than a single tracking cycle. And I do think that it's better to consolidate Reaction Rolls into representing multiple requests and/or using Approachability to ask the right people (thus reducing time and rolls spent on asking questions).

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Consider the Father Brown story The Blue Cross - summary at that link, full text linked from there: a detective is able to trace someone across town well after he has passed, by the small clues the track-ee left behind. In GURPS terms, is that Tracking, or social skills?

Sounds like a combination of multiple skills. Tracking, with perhaps an inclusion of Forensics and/or Criminology, combined with social skills or reactions.