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<blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8485916" data-attributes="member: 75787">I ran NBA for a long, very successful campaign. It was pretty rare for heat to reduce in that game (not sure if I ever did, actually), mostly because in NBA, players become more powerful over time, so that if they do nothing, they can easily overcome the heat they generated previously. Basically, initial characters are seriously inconvenienced by regular police action, whereas after a year of (real-world) play, it's trivial for anyone faced with a simple police person to handle them.Call of Cthulhu is trickier because characters do not become more powerful. If you are using the NBA style heat of &quot;people are paying attention to you&quot; then pretty much the only thing you can do to reduce it is to have time pass. If you are public-spirited or do anything to draw attention, heat cannot reduce under the standard NBA model. So the only actions possible are ones to reduce attention, and the best way to do that is divert attention to someone else, for which there are multiple possibilities mentioned in this thread.One simple, mechanical way of lowering heat might be to allow players to voluntarily reduce their credit rating -- spending their personal reputation to draw off heat. That would have the effect that as the players generate heat and &quot;pay it off&quot; they end up becoming more isolated form society ... which seems pretty Cthulhuesque.As an aside -- I love the heat mechanic. I knew it was awesome when I heard my players say &quot;no, we can't sell the gold bullion in Italy, we have too much heat there. Let's try France&quot;. And then later, when they stole an assault helicopter from a Romanian Air Force base and used it to reduce a prisoner from Dracula's forest hideout, as they left Romania behind them: &quot;Yeah, I don't think we'll be going back there for a while. We probably generated a lot of heat&quot;. Indeed they had, and did not return until near the end of the campaign.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gorgon Zee, post: 8485916, member: 75787"] I ran NBA for a long, very successful campaign. It was pretty rare for heat to reduce in that game (not sure if I ever did, actually), mostly because in NBA, players become more powerful over time, so that if they do nothing, they can easily overcome the heat they generated previously. Basically, initial characters are seriously inconvenienced by regular police action, whereas after a year of (real-world) play, it's trivial for anyone faced with a simple police person to handle them. Call of Cthulhu is trickier because characters do not become more powerful. If you are using the NBA style heat of "people are paying attention to you" then pretty much the only thing you can do to reduce it is to have time pass. If you are public-spirited or do anything to draw attention, heat cannot reduce under the standard NBA model. So the only actions possible are ones to reduce attention, and the best way to do that is divert attention to someone else, for which there are multiple possibilities mentioned in this thread. One simple, mechanical way of lowering heat might be to allow players to voluntarily reduce their credit rating -- spending their personal reputation to draw off heat. That would have the effect that as the players generate heat and "pay it off" they end up becoming more isolated form society ... which seems pretty Cthulhuesque. As an aside -- I love the heat mechanic. I knew it was awesome when I heard my players say "no, we can't sell the gold bullion in Italy, we have too much heat there. Let's try France". And then later, when they stole an assault helicopter from a Romanian Air Force base and used it to reduce a prisoner from Dracula's forest hideout, as they left Romania behind them: "Yeah, I don't think we'll be going back there for a while. We probably generated a lot of heat". Indeed they had, and did not return until near the end of the campaign. [/QUOTE]

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