Difference between revisions of "Investigation Guide"

Revision as of 16:18, 5 January 2017

Investigations are a way for your character to find out story information through some form of IC investigation. This can take many different forms in play: maybe they're researchers scouring the Archives, maybe they're charmers asking the right people the right information, maybe they're bullies messing with thugs in alleys. All of these are possibilities!

First off, you can take a look at the actual list of commands here on the official Arx website. It will likely be helpful to have that open to refer to.

Basic Investigation

So! Maybe you have a secret that your father got murdered by someone (even though, GASP, everyone thinks it was natural causes). You want to try and figure out some clues to help you find out whodunnit. You happened to find some weirdo demonic runes or something at the murder scene, so you want to investigate DEMONS. (That sounds dangerous. Don't get yourself killed.)

So! The first thing you need to do is make sure you have enough Social Resources to start an investigation. By default, the cost for a new investigation is 25 Social Resources. However, if you happen to have points in the Investigation skill, each skill point will reduce this cost by 5. (Which means that if you reach Investigation 5, your investigations are now -- huzzah! -- free!) If you don't have enough social resources, you'll need to go get some. (Maybe check out the Task Guide!)

Okay, so now you have your resources. The first thing you're going to type is @investigate/new. This will open a prompt that looks like this:

Creating an investigation:
Topic: 
Story: 
Stat: 
Skill:

So you can kind of see that it's expecting a few different inputs from you. Let's start with Topic. This is basically a short word or phrase of what you're investigating. The topic of your investigation tries to map to clues automatically, so try and use specific words rather than allusions or generic items. (Staff goes through the automatic mappings to make sure people have the right clues lined up if their investigations are successful, so being specific with your topics can be helpful.)

I'm going to go with a topic of Demon Runes. To set this, just type @investigate/topic Demon Runes.

Now we have the story to set. This is an outline of what more specifically your character is looking for and how they're going about doing it. My character Mike is a charming socializer, so I'm going to try and find the right people to ingratiate myself with and get information from. So I type: @investigate/story Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it.

So you'll see this:

Creating an investigation:
Topic: Demon Runes
Story: Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it.
Stat: 
Skill:

At this point, you could technically hit @investigate/finish and you'd be all set to go. But there are some additional things you could do that would help!

Investigating Better

Custom Stat and Skill

So by default, investigations roll Perception + Investigation. If your character has high levels in that stat + skill combination, it's generally in your best interest to leave the investigation Stat and Skill field alone. BUT, if you have a stat + skill combo that's a higher level than your Perception + Investigation that makes sense for your character to be utilizing, you can set them to use in your investigation. The system will roll both combos and give the averaged result of them. So only set a custom stat and skill if they are higher than your Perception and Investigation, otherwise it may end up dragging down your result.

So my character happens to have high Charm + Manipulation, which makes sense for my investigation because I'm going out and talking to folks. So I'm going to use those as a custom stat and skill by typing @investigate/stat Charm and @investigate/skill Manipulation. Hopefully that will make up for my sad lack of investigation skills!

If you fill out your custom stat and skill, you'll now have a screen like this:

Topic: Demon Runes
Story: Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it.
Stat: Charm
Skill: Manipulation

Now you can go ahead and type @investigate/finish to get your investigation set up! If at any point during your setup you decide you want to throw it all away and forget about your murdered dad, just type @investigate/cancel.

Lowering Difficulty

Now when you type @investigate you should see your investigation pop up on your list like so:

+-----+-------------------------+---------+
| ID  | Topic                   | Active? |
+-----+-------------------------+---------+
| 42  | Demonic Runes           | X       |
+-----+-------------------------+---------+

And you can view your investigation details by typing @investigate/view 42 (where 42 is the investigation's ID). You'll see something that looks like this:

Character: Mike
Topic: Demonic Runes
Actions: Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it. 
Modified Difficulty: 20
Current Progress: No real progress has been made to finding something new.
Stat used: Charm
Skill used: Manipulation

Investigations will start with a default difficulty that staff takes a look at and adjusts as required. If you're going to sink silver or resources into it to lower the difficulty, you might wait a couple days to see if you're going to end up working with a different number than the default.

So there are two ways to lower difficulty: resources and silver. Resources tend to lower difficulties at a rate of approximately 2 difficulty points per 5 resources. Silver requires a minimum of 5,000 to lower difficulties. (If someone has more detail about sinking silver into an investigation, please enter it here!) I see more people invest with resources than silver, but if you're poor in resources and rich in silver, the opposite might be worth it!

You can, in fact, lower your difficulty to a negative number, which will indicate you basically making actual progress on the investigation.

To invest resources into this investigation, I'm going to type @investigate/resource 42=social,20 to drop in 20 Social Resources. If I wanted to invest some silver, I could try @investigate/silver 42=5000 to drop in 5,000 silver.

I tend to use resources and drop them in in multiples of 5 or 10 and continually check how my difficulty has changed. So in the end I might have something like:

Character: Mike
Topic: Demonic Runes
Actions: Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it. 
Modified Difficulty: 5
Current Progress: No real progress has been made to finding something new.
Stat used: Charm
Skill used: Manipulation

5's a lot easier to hit than 20 as a difficulty!

Investigation Helpers

Do you have a friend? Is your friend not running their own investigation this week or helping someone else's? Maybe they can help!

My character's friend Bob is actually a pretty good investigator, and he's available this week to help, so I'm going to type @investigate/requesthelp 42=Bob. Now it's in Bob's court!

This is where @helpinvestigate comes in. Most of the commands in @helpinvestigate are parallel to the @investigate command. When you have a request for help, it will show up in your @helpinvestigate view with an ID number, like so:

You are permitted to help the following investigations:
  Mike's investigation on Demonic Runes (ID: 42)
Bob is helping the following investigations:
+----+---------------------+-------------------+
| ID | Investigation Owner | Currently Helping |
+----+---------------------+-------------------+
+----+---------------------+-------------------+

Bob types @helpinvestigate/new and then @helpinvestigate/target 42 and then he's on his way to helping! He can fill out his story and, if desired, a custom stat and skill to roll, and then type @helpinvestigate/finish to set it up. Now Bob's investigation results will be added to yours, and he'll receive the same @clue if the investigation is successful.

Adjusting Your Investigations

Maybe you find some things out in RP that change exactly what you're looking for or how you'd be looking for it. Or maybe you need to investigate something else and put your first one on the backburner.

Maybe I know that the runes I'm looking for are Elder Demonic Runes (whatever that is). I can type @investigate/changetopic 42=Elder Demonic Runes so that my topic is more specific. Or maybe I learn that the Faith totally knows some stuff, so I change my story: @investigate/changestory 42=Mike is trying to hunt down information regarding demonic runes, because there were some found at his father's murder. He's not one for the Archives, so he's trying to charm his way through society to find people who know the right stuff and get them to talk about it. He knows that members of the Faith in particular have information, so he's trying to charm them in particular. (This is a bad example, actually, because if you know a specific org has info you should try hitting up PCs in that org!)

You can also put your investigations on pause to pick up others. I could pause this one with @investigate/abandon 42 and then pick it up later with @investigate/resume 42. You can always see what your active investigation is with @investigate.

Good luck!