Compensating for anachronistic lead generation in Technoir
May 19, 2022
I have seen several reviews and actual plays of Technoir that mention the same problem: players were hesitant to generate leads about the current situation by interrogating connections. That's because "ask a guy" is not intuitive! It's an anachronism.
When was the last time you called someone in order to find out what was going on with any topic that was not specific to them? It would have made sense in the heyday of noir - if you wanted to any fresh rumours, you really had to go down to the pub. Nowadays, you check the social media and chat servers. This has changed how we meet people and how we do relationships - for example, the third places are disappearing.
There is also the problem of scale. It's no longer reasonable to expect that everybody knows each other. When Lotus Jones asks you to find out what happened to a guy who owes her that was supposed to deliver a pack of explosives but didn't, it really isn't obvious that you might get a lead by randomly asking your (shady) medic, loan shark, or car dealer - do you know how many car dealerships are in a big city?
That's why I disagree with Justin Alexander's post on Technoir and the Three Clue Rule three Connections do not equal three clues because the only thing that makes a connection into a clue is that it's listed on the character sheet. Possibly I'm being overly simulationist here. I do think that character actions have to make sense even considering genre.
It is possible to update the mechanism if we agree that a lead does not always have to be generated by the player asking a direct question to their connection. There are precedents for that - I've seen people suggest leads that are evidence at the death scene of the connection. The players will almost certainly have reason to contact some of their connections for mundane purposes. It should be possible to add clues, which gives players a reason (and possibly an excuse, if they're from a private culture) to follow up. Some examples:
- you visit your (loan shark connection) to make a payment and you notice...
- as your (chop connection) checks your ride, they complain about...
- as you trail the (hostile connection, or source of obsession), you notice they stop to talk to...
- when your (date) asks you for a light, you notice their matchbook came from...