The first Systemless Mechanics piece was on Detective Points, a style of bid-and-create for investigations. While I still feel that is a great system of limited player involvement in an investigation sometimes you might want a more abstract system that emphasizes the time it takes over the clues it gathers.  With the release of Rogue Trader there was an interesting mechanical system in there for Exploration and Investigation. There were a couple things about it I didn’t care for but over all I liked the general idea. What follows is a similar system based on the framework of Rogue Trader’s Exploration and Investigation rules. Enjoy.The system relies on whatever Investigation abilities your system already uses. We’re going to assume your system uses a set of skills or traits that help dictate how your character investigates. If your system uses a variable difficulty scale (Target Numbers, Difficulty Ratings, etc) then use the Average, Standard, or Default number. This system doesn’t make the attempts to investigated more difficult, it simply modifies the time it takes to complete the investigation.

The first thing the Game Master needs to do is to determine the total Investigation Time and the Investigation Milestones. This should all be done in Hours. Simple investigations might only take an hour or two while truly epic ones might take thousands of hours. Remember, 24 hours is One Day of investigating, 168 is a week, 744 is a long month (31 days), and 8760 hours is roughly one year. Of course all these numbers assume the players investigate for 24 hours a day. Realistically anything around 3,500 hours is going to be about a year of work with sleep and a bit of down time. Few people can do this work for hours on an end without break.

The Milestones are 3/4, 1/2, and 1/4 of the total Investigation Time. Milestones are in the points at which information can still be gathered but incompletely. The First Milestone (1/4 of the total Investigation Time) yields only 25% of the total investigation results. The Second Milestone (1/2 of the total Investigation Time) yields only 50% of the total investigation results. The Third Milestone (3/4 of the total Investigation Time) yields only 75% of the total investigation results. These Milestones allow players to stop investigations early and not walk away with nothing.

The player then makes the standard check to ensure success. If successful then 1d10 plus the appropriate trait is added to the Completed Investigation Time. Once the Completed Investigation Time is equal to or greater than the Total Investigation Time the investigation is complete and the Game Master gives the results to the players. At any time the players may stop making checks and take the last achieved Milestone results.

If the roll fails then no progress is gained but if your system uses some sort of critical failure system (natural 1s, under 1%, etc) then on a critical failure the player rolls 1d10 and subtracts that number from the Completed Investigation Time. These are small setbacks, misinformation, and false leads.

What the appropriate trait is depends on the system being used, it’s typically a part of whatever was being rolled for the check. This might be a connected Attribute or simple a fraction of the rolled Skill. The appropriate trait should be between 1 and 9, never able to double the potential of the 1d10 roll. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own.

We suggest keeping the total required time a secret from the players. Rarely do investigators know how long a case is going to take them. Just let them keep racking up time until they quit or have finished the case. This decision is left up to the Game Master and there is no wrong way to handle it.

Now, the Investigation is completed but what did all that rolling of dice mean? I hope it wasn’t just an exercise in “Roll until I say stop!”. We’ll, you’re right. While you were rolling you should be keeping track of a few important numbers. Record how many successes, failures, total time gained, and total time lost.  Give all this information to your Game Master and let them interpret it in order to give you a solid narrative.

Game Masters: Look over your players results. Did they succeed more than they failed? Did they fail at all? Did they add a lot of time or just a little? Maybe they hurt more than they helped or they didn’t help at all. The numbers can tell you a lot about how the investigation went down. If one player succeeded on every roll but only added an hour or two at a time it means they did constant, steady, work but didn’t have any major breakthroughs. If another player rolled more failures than success but when they succeeded they added a ton of time then they only really contributed in bursts, finding important information at the right times and floundering the rest of the time.

Lastly, look at what skills or traits the player was using. If you have three players doing three different things then play all that into the narrative. Maybe one player hit the streets to talk to the locals, flavor his results that way. If another hit the library and dusted off moldy tomes then his information should be along those lines. While the mechanic is basic the flavor is what makes all the difference.