Has anyone conducted an in-game investigation?
My players recently filled a clock which resulted in a secret society kidnapping one of the PC’s siblings. They know the name of the group and which entity it serves, but very little else. Our next couple play sessions will be a mini-arc centered around rescuing the PC’s sibling, but I don’t know how to handle that as a score or as a series of scores.
I was thinking, broadly, in our upcoming session we’ll figure out where the HQ is, then do a session acquiring the goods needed to break in, and then do a session of the actual rescue mission. I suppose I could condense that all into one score and handle the “gather intel” and “gather supplies” as flashbacks etc., but my players seemed excited about having an arc.
Any suggestions?
* For reference, we’re playing in a custom/homebrewed setting, and not Duskvol
** Sorry if this posts in the wrong place, I’m a rank newbie when it comes to Google+!
I think, your doing it right: Because there is no right way but ask the group what they want to play. Which parts should be longer and which parts should be shorter. If the sibling is in the HQ (or better in a safehouse?) and they want to find out, let them. It tells a lot about the PC (my sibling is important enough) and about the crew (my fellow crew member is important enough to waste time on this and not on making coin), so stress the important parts and skip the boring ones. Which one is which depends on your group.
But: Don’t let the players prepare / plan too much. As you said that’s part of the game and it’s not a contratiction.
Thanks for the response!
We played a couple days ago, and it went really well! I did end up condensing the timeline a little bit. I decided to handle the information gathering as doing a score on behalf of another faction in exchange for aid/information with the upcoming rescue mission.
We had a lot of really great character scenes and my players had a great moment where they pieced together some world-building clues and figured out the identity of a major antagonist. All in all, a good session!