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View Full Version : Consequences for a character's missbehavior (D20 Modern)



Jonesh
2008-07-21, 05:58 PM
So in my gritty postcyberpunk campaign, one of the characters assaulted a woman in her apartment, ransacked her apartment for clues and stole her firearm.
I did the routine "Are you sure? That's a crime etc." when he said he'd attack the woman and then when he said he wanted to keep her firearm.
Now, she got a good look at him and they talked for a few minutes.
And the next day when they passed one of many checkpoints, the police searching for contraband and such examined the characters' weapons which were all legit save that stolen revolver. It comes up as "stolen" in the database and since it was lost in an assault the police officer is very suspicious (without being noticed by the PCs he tags the offending PC as a suspect, they just see him fiddling with his PDA) and he confiscates the firearm and says that they would like to ask him some questions.
Now I (think I) know the most realistic thing would have been for the officer to just bring him in at the moment but I didn't want to derail the story at that time.
So the PC is given a time the next day for an interrogation.

I really just want him to really understand that his character's actions can have these kind of consequences, a kind of warning or "yellow card", so I don't really want the PC to end up in jail.
So the question is, how do I make this a real warning and at the same time don't derail everything into courtroom drama?

Joran
2008-07-21, 06:08 PM
Depending on how corruptible the police are, the quick solution seems to be a bribe to ignore the transgression. Include a warning about how the next time will be a much heftier fine. /wink, wink.

Edit: Basically, have the police officer suggest kindly that next time, he may not find a police officer that is so accommodating. From there, you can see where your characters go. There is a subtle balance of reigning in an unruly character and railroading your players.

MeklorIlavator
2008-07-21, 06:14 PM
Is money/gear important in this game? If so, have the fine/bribe be roughly equal to his take from the most recent take be. And if he has to sell of some of his nice gear to pay for it, well, thats the price of getting caught.

Prometheus
2008-07-21, 07:35 PM
Have a piece of scum offer to help get their friend out in a way that would most certainly kill a number of police-officers. If you have a piece of scum type of person that they have previously encountered and personally dislike, that's even better. The analogy between their characters and this piece of scum won't be lost on them. If they are smart, they will use the guys plan and then betray him or do it in a more humane way. If they decide to go with it, well...you're playing an evil campaign now I guess.

sleepybob
2008-07-21, 09:22 PM
how do I make this a real warning and at the same time don't derail everything into courtroom drama?

well, I'm no DM, but i have been playing a jester. he is chaotic neutral and mostly good... but recently, i have more fun playing the fool. while others are in battle, instead of helping them, i go off and start collecting the treasure or defacing important stuff. while we are in town, i rob houses and play practical jokes on people.

my DM has let me do these things because he knows that this is the only way i can have fun playing this character. i think the point of the game is for everyone to have fun.

not to say that there arent concequences. i have been caught doing all of the above as the jester and each time, i came close to going to jail or being killed just for being an idoit. BUT i had fun doing it. AND i had fun gaming my way out of it.

So basicly, punish your Pc if he/she wants to act a fool. if they have fun playing the character that survives the danger of going off and doing things that are considered against the law, then maybe you should tweak the campaign a bit to better suit your player's needs. :)

Vexxation
2008-07-21, 10:31 PM
Is money/gear important in this game? If so, have the fine/bribe be roughly equal to his take from the most recent take be. And if he has to sell of some of his nice gear to pay for it, well, thats the price for not executing the woman.
Possibly fix'd

Honestly, if the player is anything like your average gamer, the simplest solution if you get fined for a crime such as that is to off the witness.

But hey, that's what makes gaming gaming; you can do things like that to avoid moderate fines.

Granted, I'd still give the authorities a chance of finding out (perhaps a party member extorts the player, why not? He's a murderer.)

Tsotha-lanti
2008-07-21, 11:15 PM
Honestly, if the player is anything like your average gamer cyberpunk character, the simplest solution if you get fined for a crime such as that is to off the witness.

Also fix'd

Seriously though, crimes result in investigation and prosecution. If you're a stupid criminal, you get caught. If you're a smart criminal and the local justice system isn't biased against you, you won't get caught. The PC in question sounds like a stupid criminal, and there's probably a solid case - biometric evidence (prints, hair, DNA), a witness (the woman), and physical evidence (the gun). I'd RP the interrogation - the cops trying to get the dude to confess, and toss the PC in jail while the rest of the team perform a bit of infiltration and assassination to get rid of the biometric evidence, the witness, and the gun, preventing the thing from going to trial.

If the other PCs don't pull through, the perp gets sent away. Bye-bye.

Jonesh
2008-07-22, 06:41 PM
Thanks for the responses.
I've decided to make this a little sidequest so to speak. The campaign recently started but the offending PC has another PC as a close friend who also happens to be skilled in computer hacking and such.
The group also contains a police officer on vacation, a P.I. and the wealthy heir to real estate empire. And since they shortly after the assault committed a breaking and entering together at the behest of their corporate sponsor, they might be a bit crooked and perhaps, willing to stick up for each other a little bit. If they fail (so much that)/and the PC goes to jail, well, the player will just have to make a new character.

I do however expect that both me and the other players will reprimand the reckless player both in character and out of character since that character was supposed to be a "professional" at those types of "jobs". I think the problem was that the player is a little of a novice, that his character is a little vague in the personality department and that the player himself is sometimes lacking in attention span while being easily excitable :smalltongue:
But I'm certain he'll improve, I also am a bit responsible as I am fond of bad jokes and such, both when I'm playing and when I'm gamemastering:smallredface:
Still, I've become more calmer at the table and I don't expect he'll be any different when he has a few more sessions under his belt. Damn, I've always learnt something new every session :smalltongue:
Maybe I'll talk to the players beforehand so they know the direction the next session might take.

Again, thanks for the advice :smallsmile:

Jonesh
2008-07-24, 01:41 PM
Sorry for bumping,
but I'm a bit inexperienced in crime dramas and investigation quests in rpgs. For an example in my so-far-only Call of Cthulhu campaign me and the other players just went around and, to use a figure of speech, pulled HARD on every little thread that GM dangled in front of us. We still managed to survive though, mostly sane. :smalltongue:

What would US law enforcement do in a case like that, an assault in the victim's home and the theft of the victim's firearm? How would the forensic investigation be like and would they focus on anything special?

The assault took place around 2300 hrs inside the woman's apartment with the her two sons asleep, it was in a neighborhood in decline but still struggling against the urban decay. The PC didn't disguise himself or anything, and he talked with her long enough for her to get a good look at him. She wasn't intoxicated or anything and she has no criminal record, so any jury will likely see her as a reliable witness I guess?

Just ask me if you need more info about what happened or the setting etc., I'm a bit stumped and I think you guys can probably come up with more questions that need answering :smalltongue:

comicshorse
2008-07-24, 07:27 PM
That seems to me three seperate crimes:

Breaking and Entering
Assault
Theft

If the P.C. is co-operative (i.e) confesses and has a good lawyer then he might be able to get the two minor crimes ( Breaking and entering and theft) thrown out in return for a guilty plea on the assault.
Then it very much depends if he already has a record. If he is clean, has a good lawyer he might get away with a fine and a suspended sentence.(Though he should be made aware that now he has a criminal record he will be dealt with much more harshly next time).

The guy spoke with the girl, almost certainly left forensic evidence at her apartement and was caught with the stolen gun by a police weapon. Killing the girl won't get him free, but it will probably convinve the police that he's a murderer and worth a much closer investigation.
Scaring the girl into retracting the confession, stealing the weapon from the police and erasing all relevent data from the police mainframe will get him off but that is a major hassle. ( Our group once did a 'run for the codes to access the police mainframe for a week). The guy is probably better taking the hit and learning from it.
Also note if he is convicted his prints ( and maybe DNA in your game) will be on record.

Doomsy
2008-07-24, 08:54 PM
I'd have him get dragged in, roughed up, and then his friends have to bribe him out. Depending how corrupt you want the justice system to be. Note that high corruption does NOT meant the cops are going to be nice. The more corrupt they are the worse - they'll beat the hell out of him and THEN ask for the bribe money.

snoopy13a
2008-07-24, 09:13 PM
Ok, here's what would happen if they could trace the gun back the woman (the woman bought it legally and has a permit):

They'd bring the woman into the station and she'd pick out the player. Now he'd be pretty much sunk.

He'd be charged with armed robbery (since he had a gun), assault, breaking and entering and if the DA was feeling particulary nasty he could try charging him with kidnapping. Basically, he'd be looking at 20 years or so (armed robbery is a very serious crime). This is probably at the unbribeable level.

Now the way out would be if the woman had bought the gun from a black market dealer (it was stolen beforehand) so they can't trace the gun back to the woman. Perhaps the gun was actually reported stolen 10 years ago and it is clear that the player wasn't the original thief. The police officer could say something to the effect of: "I know this gun is hot and you could go down for handling stolen property, gun w/o permit, etc. However, I'll look the other way for a couple thousand"

Tsotha-lanti
2008-07-24, 09:26 PM
He'd be charged with armed robbery (since he had a gun), assault, breaking and entering and if the DA was feeling particulary nasty he could try charging him with kidnapping. Basically, he'd be looking at 20 years or so (armed robbery is a very serious crime). This is probably at the unbribeable level.

20 years today. In Cyberpunk 2020, he'd probably be looking at the full Clockwork Orange and Demolition Man treatments, one after the other. In some other settings, it'd be a bullet to the head.

Like I said, the adventure will be in making the evidence and the witness disappear, one way or another.

xPANCAKEx
2008-07-25, 09:40 AM
side quest is the way to go

have their corporate sponser become annoyed with them, but offer them an out. Make it clear in the interrogation that the PC will be going to lockdown, but there is an out. Send them on a shadow run-esque sidequest to break/enter an evidence lock up and make sure the physical evidence (gun/DNA) gets misplaced, while also retreiving another file or 2 for their employer. Make it a situation where there is no reward beyond keeping themselves in the good graces of the corp sponser (they have after all brought unneccesary negative attention to their group with this little escapade). Also - if they happen to sneak a peek at the files they are retrieving for the corp then it could open up a whole world merky blackmail and espionage, after seeing stuff that was never intended for their eyes

It just depends how flexible you can be as a DM, and would require a lot more on-the-fly thinking from you, but the PCs would probably find it a lot more rewarding as they would get a bit more control over the direction of events (but then im from the school of thought that the PCs should get out what they put in rather than have any railroading)

either way, as long as they have to do some sort of "chores" to regain good grace for zero other reward, they'll soon get the message

UglyPanda
2008-07-25, 10:07 AM
I personally don't like the idea of forcing everyone to go through a side-quest because one player is a git. It doesn't really act as a deterrent because it says to the players that the first time a character does something stupid, not only is he not punished, but they get a free plot hook.

The following is not a criticism of real-life cops, it is simply what I think they would do in a cinematic situation:
If you want him to know he did wrong, you could try to let him know that he's a criminal now. The police have him on record for crimes they can't prove, so they're pissed at him. The next time there is a dragnet, they're going to pull him in for vaguely fitting the description. If he's got an alibi for the next stupid thing he pulls, they're still going to grill him. If he continues down this path, one of the cops might to nail him with false evidence for an unrelated crime because he lived nearby.

comicshorse
2008-07-25, 08:38 PM
I personally don't like the idea of forcing everyone to go through a side-quest because one player is a git. It doesn't really act as a deterrent because it says to the players that the first time a character does something stupid, not only is he not punished, but they get a free plot hook.

I gotta disagree with this. If your players are anything like mine the other players are NEVER going to let the P.C. forget they had to save his ass. That kind of lesson should think in, because the other P.C.s do all the work of driving it home for you.
) A couple of years later one of mine still gets stick over the 'idol incident'