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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5710168" data-attributes="member: 54707">It is interesting to me BG. I always like stories  like that.   I've got a buddy in military INTEL who, when he  retires, wants us to start a Security firm together, aimed mostly at corporate  and financial security and corporate counter-espionage. (I've worked a couple of  cases involving corporate espionage which I liked a lot). I'd handle the  investigative work, and he'd handle most of the actual security assessment  profiles, etc. I don't have the time for that right now, though I have been  working on the skeletal framework for such a firm. Right now though I've got way  too much to do with my company and my independent consulting work, and my  fiction writing career.   As for me I've got no interest in bodyguard work  and personal security per se, though I have worked a couple of investigative  background assessesments and cases for high profile individuals, and it was  interesting work. It's amazing, more often than not, what you will find in  a person's background.   As for being an old boxer, I box too, but mainly  for practice nowadays at my age, but your contact kinda reminds me of the  fictional character Spenser, by Robert Parker, and I often like reading his  cases.   In any event I like people who have led lives of  real life adventure. I actually far prefer that to fictional adventure  characters.     By the way I offer the following as a way to  enhance your fictional case work/in-game mysteries, assuming you aren't already  employing these methods:   1. Give plenty of opportunities for surveillance.   2. Give plenty of opportunities for Manhunting and  Tracking, from area to area and into "bad areas" in pursuit of suspects. This  can be very dangerous in and of itself, and is great work. Plus, strangers go  into an area where another language is spoken, and it's obvious you're snooping,  and someone there might wanna do ya just for the hell of it. So you could  enflame the wrong people "just because." That gets real interesting real  quick. 3. Give plenty of opportunities for undercover  work. To me undercover work is by far both the most dangerous, and the most  productive (and my favorite) form of investigative work. 4. You might encourage the development of entire  Undercover personas, and cover stories on the part of your player characters. I  never go anywhere personally without a good cover story, and fake business  cards, no matter what I'm doing. And certainly I'd never walk into an  investigation without cover IDs, cards, stories, backgrounds, etc. 5. You might want to allow, depending on the  character types again, Breaking and Entering to gain information. 6. Rather than Red Herrings per se, interviews and  interrogations will be filled with disinformation and misinformation. It's  almost never clues (although you can draw faulty conclusions about what a clue  actually means, it never really lies) that lead you astray, it's what  victims and perps and witnesses say, or don't  say. 7. You might want to give opportunities for  Vadding and infiltration. Again this can be done as part of undercover work, or  as a separate exercise. 8. If a perp or those involved in a crime "make"  your characters, or your characters make no attempt to disguise or conceal their  part in the case then you might want to set up ambushes and situations in which  they have to engage in escape and evasion. This has happened to me on more than  one occasion and is both thrilling (in a weird way), but also very disturbing.  And can be damned irritating and very dangerous. In a game it could become a  min-adventure within the larger adventure. 9. You might want to encourage your players, if  they do this kind of thing often enough, to develop their own sets of  specialized equipment for just such occasions.      For instance, I have my own specialized parks,  packs, and equipment bags (actually I learned this as a kid from playing D&D  and wargames ironically enough, and then took up the practice in real life when  I became a teen. I now carry my:   Normal Daypack - which includes my normal going  out equipment plus fake credentials plus binoculars, a camera, some basic  tools, a fake wallet and credit cards, etc (in the unlikely case I get  mugged).   My CERT Disaster bag - I became CERT qualified  through my CAP Squadron and it contains my disaster and some of my rescue gear  and utility tools.   My SAR (Search and Rescue) pack   My various Investigative packs, kits, and  gear   My Infiltration and Paramilitary Pack and  gear   My Rudding and Hiking Pack and gear   My Vadding and Urban Exploration Pack and  gear   My Weapons and (NLW and LTL) Non-lethal weapons  bags    My Disguise kit   My Medical Park and Medic gear and field surgery  kits     Your characters probably won't require this kind  of specialization. (I have packs devoted to different things because I usually  know exactly what equipment is required for which function and this keeps me  from hauling around one big huge pack of unnecessary equipment, but rather  individual packs are streamlined and are "tool-specialized" and gear  ready for any particular function. Plus you can easily and quickly  retrieve the right equipment if you have the right pack.)   Nevertheless they might want to have an  investigative pack, a disguise kit, a basic first aid/medics kit, and maybe an  exploration/infiltration kit.   Don't know of that helped ya any or not, but good  luck with your games. Anyways, I gotta cut out. See ya.</blockquote>

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