There are always those problems that the police can not or will not handle, for those problems there is another avenue, the provate investigator.
| Typical Goals and Motivations: | Making an honest buck in a dishonest world (strike that, reverse it). Possibly the thrill of taking on the cases that the police were incapable of handling. |
| Typical Abilities: | High INT is a must, as well as a large array of information gathering skills. Also sugggested are acting, disuise, Eidetic Memory (if you can justify it), and everything in the choose two list that you didn't choose. Also useful, for the armchair type detective is money. |
| Suggested Disadvantages: | Distinctive features for the particularly eccentrinc PI, enemies, psych lims (rude, bad tempered, intollerant, ect.), or poorer than dirt. |
| Roleplaying Tips: | There are so many way to play the PI that I'm not going to go into it now. They fit well into any time lime with no problem (there have been PIs for a long time and they'll be here for as long as the police can't do everything). |
Skills and Talents |
Cost |
| WF: Small Arms | 1 |
| WF: Common Mele Weapons | 2 |
| Conversation | 3 |
| Deduction | 3 |
| Persuasion | 3 |
| Shadowing | 3 |
| Choose two: Acting, Disguise, Streetwise, High Society, Speedreading, Stealth, Shadowing, Bureaucratics, Bribery | 6 |
| Perk: Private Investigator's License | 2 |
| KS: Criminal Law (11-) | 2 |
| Contact: Current Employer (8-) | 1 |
| Package Bonus | -3 |
| Watched: Current Employer (8-) | -5 |
| Distinctive Features (see Suggested Disadvantages) | -5 |
| Watched: Local Police (8-) | -5 |
Package Cost |
8 |
This archetype represents a standard career/job that can be found in a
modern setting. It was deliberately made slightly generic so that it can be easily
modified to cover a wide range of times, from Victorian to near future.
Modern and semi-modern settings games can take many forms from Horror to Pulp Science
Fiction to Mysteries to Spy-vs-Spy (thank you Mad Magazine). The old Danger
International and Justice Inc. games from Hero Games covered these genres very
well, as well as games like Chaosium Inc's Call of Cthulhu and several of Steve
Jackson Game's GURPs supplements.