[nWoD] Dealing with a lawful PC

[ahenobarbi]

I'm playing in a new World of Darkness campaign, based in central Europe with character theme of communism scions.

All characters are cops, mine is the leader of the team. An old (other characters are in their 30s, mine is over 50), corrupt (up to using money & influence to cover killing an NPC when driving drink), wealthy, good at influencing people and enjoys hunting(as a side note he is an efficient cop as long as it doesn't get in the way of his self interest(and being perceived as an efficient cop is in his self interest)).

From time to time the player of the righteous newbie plays with us. I'm looking for inspiration for corrupting the character (its player is ok with that) or controlling it (ditto) or removing it from the picture(...).

Can ya help me o mighty Playground?

(odc if more info is needed I'll provide it)
(I prefere to stick to mundane methods)

[A Tad Insane]

The standard "be lawful and alienated or corrupt with anything you want" should be viable, especially with real humans doing to peer pressuring

Have him in a situation where a crime is committed, but the rest of the party wants to ignore it. If the player reports it, the criminal still will go on Scott free, and the party will only get a slight slap on the wrist for going against the grain. But if he goes with it, he'll get something he really wants, such as money to buy a house for his girl, or pay for the surgery his father desperately needs

[Mechalich]

The approach depends on whether or not the cops boss(es) are themselves corrupt or even simply down with corruption happening because preventing it would be too much work. Assuming they are, which is the most likely, since the excrement rolls downhill, then being the straight cop in the crooked department results in ostracism and relegation to uselessness. Bureaucracy is very good at finding ways to dumping problems in places where they can't accomplish anything.

A good example: the end of the The Wire, season 1. McNulty gets reassigned to the harbor patrol unit for being a over-zealous in his pursuit of his ideal of actual justice (and for being self-righteous about it), and until the story writes him a way out, he's stuck riding around on a boat dealing with ticky-tack fines, breathing diesel fumes, and shivering in the cold.

Now, you can't actually ostracize a character so completely in game, since it's not fair to the player, but you can absolutely threaten to do that and you can reward the others for the fruits of their corruption while ratcheting up the pressure (financial is the traditional method, missing out on awards and overtime assignments can really hurt some cops) in order to squeeze from both sides.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Do NOTHING until you discuss things with the other player. Once you have their cooperation, THEN you can start working out scenarios.

[ahenobarbi]

I'll be calling player Mike and his character Beherov to (hopefully) make my posts easier to read (not actual names).

Do NOTHING until you discuss things with the other player. Once you have their cooperation, THEN you can start working out scenarios.

I did. To the best of my understanding the Mike is ok with that.

Spoiler: little bit of history

Show

The campaign has been going on for 3 years or so (with frequency <1/month). Mike joined when campaign has been going on for a while, others characters had seen some hard to explain stuff, established some trust between them. Also Mike only joined us for part of three or so stories.

Beherov (character) was transferred to us from another government agency was very rigorous and demanded to be told everything all the time. Since other characters have good reasons to keep some information they have to themselves so we did. After a session like that Mike complained that he felt left out I explained reasons for that (my character will do a lot to have more dirt on people that they have on him) but I started giving Beherov some more info than before and offering him more occasions to learn stuff on his own.

In reaction to that Beherov started demanding info even harder and getting into situations where he may cause trouble for me (intentionally).

I talked to Mike about and explained that if his character continues behaving like that my character will have little choice but to remove risk Beherov is posing. Mike said that I should treat this as a challenge.

The standard "be lawful and alienated or corrupt with anything you want" should be viable, especially with real humans doing to peer pressuring

Have him in a situation where a crime is committed, but the rest of the party wants to ignore it. If the player reports it, the criminal still will go on Scott free, and the party will only get a slight slap on the wrist for going against the grain. But if he goes with it, he'll get something he really wants, such as money to buy a house for his girl, or pay for the surgery his father desperately needs

We know rather little about each others backstories so I don't know what he wants. Now my character is already working on changing that (in retrospect I should have done that long time ago).

The approach depends on whether or not the cops boss(es) are themselves corrupt or even simply down with corruption happening because preventing it would be too much work. Assuming they are, which is the most likely, since the excrement rolls downhill, then being the straight cop in the crooked department results in ostracism and relegation to uselessness. Bureaucracy is very good at finding ways to dumping problems in places where they can't accomplish anything.

Normally I could have him fired (the character did some stuff stupid enough to achieve that, especially with connections my character has) but we're currently being audited (and suspect this is a revenge for one of us accidentally annoying a very influential human-looking businessman) so I could get my self fired instead (because it seems there are folks with even better connections).

A good example: the end of the The Wire, season 1. McNulty gets reassigned to the harbor patrol unit for being a over-zealous in his pursuit of his ideal of actual justice (and for being self-righteous about it), and until the story writes him a way out, he's stuck riding around on a boat dealing with ticky-tack fines, breathing diesel fumes, and shivering in the cold.

Now, you can't actually ostracize a character so completely in game, since it's not fair to the player, but you can absolutely threaten to do that and you can reward the others for the fruits of their corruption while ratcheting up the pressure (financial is the traditional method, missing out on awards and overtime assignments can really hurt some cops) in order to squeeze from both sides.

I tried that but it didn't work because when my character did everything in his power to restrain Beherov to safe (for me) activities (also know as paperwork, training, and sitting out session) world started to behave in a strange ways in order to get him interacting with the story.

[propheticsteel]

If he has a family, have the powers that be threaten to kill them if he doesn't take X bribe to do Y wrongdoing. That's what the cartels do in the US.