Help with a Tracking Challenge

[BlueBullet]

Hey guys, wondered if I could get your help with a challenge I'm putting together. I'm three sessions into my DC Adventures, and my players are really enjoying the game. Now I want to give them a big challenge

Here's a basic rundown of what I want to do and the setting

The challenge is taking place in Robinson Park, Gotham City, at night. The lights and electrics are shut off, and the players need to find five thugs who have run into the park after a skirmish. The tracking challenge ends with the discovery of Poison Ivy, who has taken control of the park and is ensnaring the thugs to her own end.

Dependant on a Persuasion Check with a police officer before the challenge, the heroes can receive a flashlight to help them navigate the darkness, otherwise all checks will be at a +2 modifier. The electrics and be repaired and switched back on via a small power station to the east of the park (with a Technology Check), removing the modifier.

Two of the players have the Tracking advantage in lieu of the Senses power. However, neither possess a power in Speed, which makes their Speed Rank 0 if I'm right.

In terms of what thye find tracking, I plan to have the normal tracking findings; footprints, broken twigs, flattened grass, etc. Higher checks result in finding entwined thugs within vines and other such things. I also plan on having high Persuasion Checks (DC 25) to notice minor tremors in the ground, hinting at Ivy's presence, and possible location.

Hope you guys can help out, I'm really excited for this, especially with what I have planned long term. Thanks

[JDRook]

Sounds great so far. The biggest trick with challenges, IMHO, is keeping them interesting with a lot of description and flavour; otherwise it's just a series of die rolls. It seems to me you already have that in mind, so beyond praise I'm not sure what kind of help it is you're asking for.

[BlueBullet]

Hey JDRook!

I'm looking for navigation help. With the lights out, would it take longer for the tracking challenge to be completed? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Measurements Table in the PH, this will be the first time I'll use it extensively. Would it be easier to draw maps for my players to use? How big is your average park, that sort of thing. Basically, how would I be able to make this all work with the system.

[JDRook]

Oh, so you want to get really granular, then? DCA/3e tends to be a little more abstract, and doesn't have any formal map rules, so you could just figure out how long things take and what distances are involved on the fly, which allows you to speed things up or slow them down as necessary to keep the game interesting.

But if you're asking for details that are specific to the DCU and the harder mechanics, there's a few things you can use:

- Gotham is of course a thinly veiled version of New York City, so using maps of Central Park as inspiration for Robinson Park is reasonable. Then again, there are some official and unofficial maps of both floating around the web. According to the wikis I just glanced through, Central Park is about 850 acres, while Robinson is supposed to be around 300, or about a third the size. You could use those as a basic guide and maybe print them out and point at rough areas, or go hardcore and graph-map it, but I favour the more abstract route.

- Using the Search guidelines under the Investigation skill, and calculating 300 acres as about 1/2 square mile (distance rank 7), the time it would take to search the entire park would be rank 9, or 1 hour. Since it's night, it would be reasonable to say that the search becomes more difficult and therefore takes several hours. If you wanted to use numbers, searching with no lights could be considered a major circumstantial penalty, so -5 for five steps down the time ranks, meaning the search would take more than a day, so "sensible" people like the GCPD would want to wait until daybreak. Getting a flashlight or some other sensory assistance would offset the penalty, say to minor -2, and the search would take an estimated 4 hours. Of course, that's all "game-time" and good results on your tracking challenges should cut that time down considerably.

[BlueBullet]

Well, I was only considering maps because of the location, but I had a thought that if the park lights are out, they wouldn't know where they'd be going anyway. Had an idea, to withhold a potential map, literally keeping them in the dark, and then rewarding them with a layout if the electrics are fixed.

I figured having a time aspect to it would work, considering in terms of setting, it's only the start of the night, so I suppose having the players fix the lights would add incentive to NOT be in the park all night. And I did think that Tracking would help cut down the time in any case. 300 acres sounds like a good size to search too.

Thanks for the pointers, Rook, I think I have a better grasp of this now. This is all prep for a bigger challenge in a future session